Devils Garden Hoodoos
Near Escalante, Utah
Twelve miles down the washboard of Hole in the Rock Road, a jumble of pale stone rises from the desert floor like a sculpture park designed by wind and time. This is Devils Garden, a maze of hoodoos, arches, and rounded fins carved from Entrada sandstone. There are no marked trails, just an invitation to wander among the stone.
The rock here was laid down roughly one hundred sixty million years ago, in the middle of the Jurassic period, when this was a coastal plain of shifting sand. Geologists divide the Entrada sandstone into layers of differing hardness, and the whimsical shapes of Devils Garden form exactly where a softer, clay rich layer has eroded away to expose the tougher, redder rock beneath. The forces at work are patient and relentless.
By day the desert sun heats the stone, and by night it cools and contracts, so that over centuries the rock cracks and flakes apart in a process called thermal weathering. Rain slowly dissolves the mineral cement holding the sand grains together, rounding every edge. The result is a gallery of balanced rocks, slender toadstools, and delicate spans like Metate Arch, framed against open sky.
It is an easy stop, family friendly and free, and one of the best places anywhere to see how ordinary sandstone becomes something that looks alive.
