Rainbow Bridge National Monument

Somewhere deep in the canyon labyrinth southeast of Page, a natural stone arch bridges a narrow side canyon that feeds Lake Powell. Rainbow Bridge spans two hundred seventy-five feet across a creek bed and rises two hundred ninety feet high, roughly the same height as the Statue of Liberty. At its crown, the arch is forty-two feet thick and thirty-three feet wide, making it one of the largest natural arches on earth.

The Navajo name for Rainbow Bridge is Nonnezoshe, meaning rainbow turned to stone. The Paiute knew it as well, as did the ancestral Pueblo peoples who lived throughout this canyon country centuries before European contact. To the Navajo, the arch is a sacred symbol embodying the deities responsible for clouds, rainbows, and rain, the very essence of life in the desert.

Five affiliated Native nations consider it a sacred site: the Navajo, Hopi, San Juan Southern Paiute, Kaibab Paiute, and White Mesa Ute. In nineteen oh nine, an expedition led by explorers Byron Cummings and William Douglass became the first non-Native party to document the bridge. President William Howard Taft designated it a National Monument on May thirtieth, nineteen ten.

Theodore Roosevelt and novelist Zane Grey were among the first outsiders to make the multi-day horseback journey in from Navajo Mountain. The creation of Lake Powell transformed access entirely. What once required days on horseback can now be reached by boat: a full-day tour departing Wahweap Marina covers more than fifty miles across the lake to a short trail that threads up the twisting side canyon to the bridge.