Moonshine Arch, Utah

Linda and I are visiting her sister, Pat, in Vernal, Utah.  This is wild country near Dinosaur National Monument, and we have explored it several times.  But until now we have never heard of Moonshine Arch.

Getting to the arch was half the fun, and at my age I wasn’t sure I could do it.  I drove about a mile on dirt roads before hiking another mile or so, including about a half mile up a fairly steep, rough ridge, and back down again.  It wouldn’t be a big deal for a younger person, but I was glad to find I could still do it.

The arch is remarkable.  It parallels a huge rock alcove.  Obviously, thousands of years of flash floods have roared downhill, scoured out the alcove in a huge curve, and worn through a wall of rock to form Moonshine Arch.  The arch is about 85 feet long and 40 feet high.

I made the hike in the morning to avoid the afternoon heat, and the light was on the back of the arch, visible from the alcove.  The outside of the arch was in shadow.

If you plan to go, take plenty of water, park outside the fence, and hike the rest of the way.  An ATV or jeep might make it part way, but the ruts and rocks are a real challenge.

Please remember, my photos are copyrighted.  Please contact me if you want to use them.  My fees are reasonable.

Knight Mill, Silver City, Utah

People seem to be attracted to large building ruins.  The Parthenon in Greece, Coliseum in Italy, Machu Picchu in Peru, and Mayan ruins in Central America are all big tourist attractions.  We have our massive ruins here in the American west too, but they are largely ignored except by ghost town hunters.

The Knight Mill ruins are a good example.  This massive concrete ruin is on the edge of Silver City, Utah, a ghost town that has nearly completely disappeared.  The smelter was built here in 1907 and it shut down in 1915.

Jesse Knight found several mines in the Eureka, Utah area, including the Humbug and the Iron Blossom lode, so he built this smelter and a railroad to process the ore.  The mill was closed and dismantled when it became more economical to ship ore to a more modern mill.

There are extensive ruins of solution tanks just outside the more massive ruins of the main mill building.  These tanks could be a source of dangerous contamination and should be avoided.

So much of the building has been destroyed that there aren’t many small details to photograph, but there is still some interesting rust on site.  It looks like iron beams were cut off and their stubs left to rust into fantastic shapes.  Is this a nightmarish bird or a bat?

Ore was crushed and mixed with mercury, resulting in an amalgam that had to be heated to separate the valuable metals.  I think this was a kiln used to cook amalgam to separate mercury from gold and silver.  Of course, the kilns could also be a source of contamination that should be avoided.

I like this desert arch, which is probably all that is left of another kiln.  It seems so out of place out there by itself.

While I can’t say that ruins like this are beautiful, like the classical ruins mentioned above, they are interesting and awe inspiring.  They are a big part of our western history, which is disappearing fast, and they deserve to be documented.

All photos are copyrighted and must not be used for any purpose without my permission.

Arches National Park, Utah

This is a flashback to a trip Linda and I took to southeastern Utah last October.  We were exploring the red rock country from the Green River area to Monument Valley in northern Arizona.  One evening we drove into Arches National Park to photograph the late light.  Arches is located near Moab, which is the perfect place to stay to explore several state and national parks.

It is nearly impossible to find unique photos in Arches National Park.  The place is so beautiful that I can't imagine how many photos have been taken there.  After entering the park, there is a steep hill to ascend, followed by this magnificent sandstone ridge called Park Avenue.  As the sun descended in the west, shadows from another ridge were outlined on the huge formations of Park Avenue.

Continuing on, we soon came to Balanced Rock, another site that has been photographed thousands of times.  As the sun continued to drop in the west, the rock took on a bright glow.  Pretty, but what could be done to make it different from the average tourist photo?  I decided to fill the sky with this rugged old tree as a companion to the beautiful red rock.

We really weren't very far into the park when we turned down a side road to the Windows area.  The scene was changing fast as the sun nearly touched the horizon.  When I got to North Window there was a crowd there watching the moonrise through the arch.  Just a couple of years earlier, I had the good fortune to photograph a sunset here when I had the view to myself.  Anyway, I kind of like having people in the picture to add human interest and scale.  By now, the very low sun had turned the reddish brown rock a glowing orange-red.

Just a few minutes later the glow was gone.  I turned and looked toward the west in time to see the sun disappear, giving me a quick silhouette of Turret Arch to photograph.  Magnificent!

I barely scratched the surface of all there is to see in Arches National Park.  The road goes on for miles past several more arches, and there are trails to many more.  I've learned from experience that this is one place where early or late light is the only way to go for most images.