View from Head of the Rocks

View from Head of the Rocks. Lay of the Land. , The Last Frontier , ”No animal without wings could cross the deep gulches in the sandstone basin at our feet. The stream which we had followed and whose course soon became lost in the multitude of chasms before us was not the one we were in search of but an unknown, unnamed river draining the eastern slope of the Aquarius Plateau and flowing through a deep, narrow canyon to the Colorado River. Believing our party to be the discoverers, we decided to call this stream, in honor of Father Escalante, the old Spanish explorer, Escalante River and the country which it drains Escalante Basin." , -Almon H. Thompson, Second Powell Expedition, 1872 , From this vantage point, you can see all the way from the Aquarius Plateau along the northern horizon to Navajo Mountain on the Utah-Arizona border. The vista before you encompasses a maze of deep, winding canyons that form the Escalante River basin., Henry Mountains , There’s a good reason why the Henry Mountains were the last mountain range in the continental U.S. to be mapped and named , they are spectacularly rugged and remote. The Henries are home to one of the few free-roaming bison herds in the country, which were introduced here in 1941., Navajo Mountain , Known to the Navajo people as Naatsis’áán, or “Head of the Earth,” Navajo Mountain straddles the border between Utah and Arizona on the south side of the Colorado River. Water flowing off this 10,416-foot laccolith (volcanic) dome carved a labyrinth of sandstone formations, including Rainbow Bridge, the world’s largest natural bridge., (top captions, left to right) , Aquarius Plateau (Boulder Mountain) . Escalante River Corridor . Henry Mountain . Little Rockies Mountains . LaSal Mountains . Circle Cliffs . Navajo Mountain . Kaiparowits Plateau.