Arches National Park features over 2,000 natural sandstone arches that more than 1 million visitors come from far and wide to see each year. Vibrant colors make these fragile geological formations a sight to see in the desert.

Within the park’s more than 75,000 acres, you will find a myriad of other strange and unusual geological formations like soaring pinnacles and massive balancing rocks. Most of these formations are the result of an underlying salt bed that is thousands of feet thick in places. Deposited about 300 million years ago, the salt bed was covered with sandstone. As the saltbed was exposed to the elements, erosion carved out the arches and other geologic features for us to explore today.

These arches won’t be around forever; with over 1 million visitors a year the ecosystem here is threatened, and the fragile terrain is deteriorating. Since 1977, forty-three arches have collapsed. Landscape Arch is longer than a football field, and a 9-story building could fit beneath its span.