Sipapu Bridge @ Natural Bridges National Monument, Utah

Utah's First National Monument.

 

Viewed from the roadside viewpoint,

 

Declared a National Monument in 1908, this bridge is one of three in Natural Bridges Monument, named "Kachina," "Owachomo" and "Sipapu" in honor of the ancestral Puebloans who once made this place their home.

 

Sipapu

A Hopi term for the opening between worlds, the present name was given by William Douglas, who led a government survey party to the bridges in 1908, mapping the exact boundaries of the new national monument. Douglas thought that the ruins and rock art found in the area must be related to the Hopi people of northern Arizona.

 

People repeatedly occupied and abandoned Natural Bridges during prehistoric times. They first began using this area during the Archaic period, from the year 7000 BCE (Before Common Era) to 500 CE (Common Era). Only the rock art and stone tools left by hunter-gatherer groups reveal that humans lived here then. Around 700 CE, ancestors of modern Puebloan people moved onto the mesa tops to dry farm and later left as the natural environment changed.

 

Height: 220 feet (67 meters)

Span: 268 feet (82 meters)

Width: 31 feet (9.5 meters)

Thickness: 53 feet (16 meters)

Done