I had read some days before about the replacement of these nice buses… Not many Saurer buses are left here, and probably it belonged to the last that were still in daily use in 2014… For me, it was a great surprise to see it there, at the border in Bardonnex!

I'm really sorry for the awful quality – when I've seen it first, we were driving and couldn't stop, and later at night, well… I can't really take good photos at night without tripod (and without my own camera). :–) I'll still upload them though.

 

This bus was there to be hauled to Van Hool in Belgium (probably it was part of a deal with Van Hool when they sold the new buses to TPG?) It should have been exported to the Ukraine, but it will now probably be scrapped… :–(

Who knows more?

Arches National Park is a national park in eastern Utah, United States. The park is adjacent to the Colorado River, 4 miles (6 km) north of Moab, Utah. More than 2,000 natural sandstone arches are located in the park, including the well-known Delicate Arch, as well as a variety of unique geological resources and formations. The park contains the highest density of natural arches in the world.

 

The park consists of 310.31 square kilometres (76,680 acres; 119.81 sq mi; 31,031 ha) of high desert located on the Colorado Plateau. The highest elevation in the park is 5,653 feet (1,723 m) at Elephant Butte, and the lowest elevation is 4,085 feet (1,245 m) at the visitor center. The park receives an average of less than 10 inches (250 mm) of rain annually.

 

Administered by the National Park Service, the area was originally named a national monument on April 12, 1929, and was re designated as a national park on November 12, 1971. The park received more than 1.6 million visitors in 2018.

 

As stated in the foundation document in U.S. National Park Service website:

 

The purpose of Arches National Park is to protect extraordinary examples of geologic features including arches, natural bridges, windows, spires, and balanced rocks, as well as other features of geologic, historic, and scientific interest, and to provide opportunities to experience these resources and their associated values in their majestic natural settings.

 

The national park lies above an underground evaporite layer or salt bed, which is the main cause of the formation of the arches, spires, balanced rocks, sandstone fins, and eroded monoliths in the area. This salt bed is thousands of feet thick in places and was deposited in the Paradox Basin of the Colorado Plateau some 300 million years ago (Mya) when a sea flowed into the region and eventually evaporated. Over millions of years, the salt bed was covered with debris eroded from the Uncompahgre Uplift to the northeast. During the Early Jurassic (about 200 Mya), desert conditions prevailed in the region and the vast Navajo Sandstone was deposited. An additional sequence of stream laid and windblown sediments, the Entrada Sandstone (about 140 Mya), was deposited on top of the Navajo. Over 5,000 feet (1,500 m) of younger sediments were deposited and have been mostly eroded. Remnants of the cover exist in the area including exposures of the Cretaceous Mancos Shale. The arches of the area are developed mostly within the Entrada formation.

 

The weight of this cover caused the salt bed below it to liquefy and thrust up layers of rock into salt domes. The evaporites of the area formed more unusual "salt anticlines" or linear regions of uplift. Faulting occurred and whole sections of rock subsided into the areas between the domes. In some places, they turned almost on edge. The result of one such 2,500-foot (760 m) displacement, the Moab Fault, is seen from the visitor center.

 

As this subsurface movement of salt shaped the landscape, erosion removed the younger rock layers from the surface. Except for isolated remnants, the major formations visible in the park today are the salmon-colored Entrada Sandstone, in which most of the arches form, and the buff-colored Navajo Sandstone. These are visible in layer-cake fashion throughout most of the park. Over time, water seeped into the surface cracks, joints, and folds of these layers. Ice formed in the fissures, expanding and putting pressure on surrounding rock, breaking off bits and pieces. Winds later cleaned out the loose particles. A series of free-standing fins remained. Wind and water attacked these fins until, in some, the cementing material gave way and chunks of rock tumbled out. Many damaged fins collapsed. Others, with the right degree of hardness and balance, survived despite their missing sections. These became the famous arches.

 

Although the park's terrain may appear rugged and durable, it is extremely fragile. More than 1 million visitors each year threaten the fragile high-desert ecosystem. The problem lies within the soil's crust, which is composed of cyanobacteria, algae, fungi, and lichens that grow in the dusty parts of the park. Factors that make Arches National Park sensitive to visitor damage include being a semiarid region, the scarce, unpredictable rainfall, lack of deep freezing, and lack of plant litter, which results in soils that have both a low resistance to and slow recovery from, compressional forces such as foot traffic. Methods of indicating effects on the soil are cytophobic soil crust index, measuring of water infiltration, and t-tests that are used to compare the values from the undisturbed and disturbed areas.

 

Geological processes that occurred over 300 million years ago caused a salt bed to be deposited, which today lies beneath the landscape of Arches National Park.[ Over time, the salt bed was covered with sediments that eventually compressed into rock layers that have since been named Entrada Standstone. Rock layers surrounding the edge of the salt bed continued to erode and shift into vertical sandstone walls called fins. Sand collected between vertical walls of the fins, then slightly acidic rain combined with carbon dioxide in the air allowed for the chemical formation of carbonic acid within the trapped sand. Over time, the carbonic acid dissolved the calcium carbonate that held the sandstone together. Many of the rock formations have weaker layers of rock on bottom that are holding stronger layers on top. The weaker layers would dissolve first, creating openings in the rock. Gravity caused pieces of the stronger rock layer to fall piece by piece into an arch shape. Arches form within rock fins at points of intense fracturing localization, or weak points in the rock's formation, caused by horizontal and vertical discontinuities. Lastly, water, wind, and time continued this erosion process and ultimately created the arches of Arches National Park. All of the arches in the park are made of Entrada Sandstone, however, there are slight differences in how each arch was developed. This allows the Entrada Sandstone to be categories into 3 groups including Slick rock members, Dewey rock members, and Moab members. Vertical arches can be developed from Slick rock members, a combination of Slick rock members and Moab members, or Slick rock members resting above Dewey rock members. Horizontal arches (also called potholes) are formed when a vertical pothole formation meets a horizontal cave, causing a union into a long arch structure. The erosion process within Arches National Park will continue as time continues to pass. Continued erosion combined with vertical and horizontal stress will eventually cause arches to collapse, but still, new arches will continue to form for thousands of years.

 

Humans have occupied the region since the last ice age 10,000 years ago. Fremont people and Ancestral Puebloans lived in the area until about 700 years ago. Spanish missionaries encountered Ute and Paiute tribes in the area when they first came through in 1775, but the first European-Americans to attempt settlement in the area were the Mormon Elk Mountain Mission in 1855, who soon abandoned the area. Ranchers, farmers, and prospectors later settled Moab in the neighboring Riverine Valley in the late 1870s. Word of the beauty of the surrounding rock formations spread beyond the settlement as a possible tourist destination.

 

The Arches area was first brought to the attention of the National Park Service by Frank A. Wadleigh, passenger traffic manager of the Denver and Rio Grande Western Railroad. Wadleigh, accompanied by railroad photographer George L. Beam, visited the area in September 1923 at the invitation of Alexander Ringhoffer, a Hungarian-born prospector living in Salt Valley. Ringhoffer had written to the railroad to interest them in the tourist potential of a scenic area he had discovered the previous year with his two sons and a son-in-law, which he called the Devils Garden (known today as the Klondike Bluffs). Wadleigh was impressed by what Ringhoffer showed him, and suggested to Park Service director Stephen T. Mather that the area be made a national monument.

 

The following year, additional support for the monument idea came from Laurence Gould, a University of Michigan graduate student (and future polar explorer) studying the geology of the nearby La Sal Mountains, who was shown the scenic area by local physician Dr. J. W. "Doc" Williams.

 

A succession of government investigators examined the area, in part due to confusion as to the precise location. In the process, the name Devils Garden was transposed to an area on the opposite side of Salt Valley that includes Landscape Arch, the longest arch in the park. Ringhoffer's original discovery was omitted, while another area nearby, known locally as the Windows, was included. Designation of the area as a national monument was supported by the Park Service in 1926 but was resisted by President Calvin Coolidge's Interior Secretary, Hubert Work. Finally, in April 1929, shortly after his inauguration, President Herbert Hoover signed a presidential proclamation creating the Arches National Monument, consisting of two comparatively small, disconnected sections. The purpose of the reservation under the 1906 Antiquities Act was to protect the arches, spires, balanced rocks, and other sandstone formations for their scientific and educational value. The name Arches was suggested by Frank Pinkely, superintendent of the Park Service's southwestern national monuments, following a visit to the Windows section in 1925.

 

In late 1938, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed a proclamation that enlarged the Arches to protect additional scenic features and permit the development of facilities to promote tourism. A small adjustment was made by President Dwight Eisenhower in 1960 to accommodate a new road alignment.

 

In early 1969, just before leaving office, President Lyndon B. Johnson signed a proclamation substantially enlarging the Arches. Two years later, President Richard Nixon signed legislation enacted by Congress, which significantly reduced the total area enclosed, but changed its status. Arches National Park was formally dedicated in May 1972.

 

In 1980, vandals attempted to use an abrasive kitchen cleanser to deface ancient petroglyphs in the park, prompting park officials to recruit physicist John F. Asmus, who specialized in using lasers to restore works of art, to use his technology to repair the damage. Asmus "zapped the panel with intense light pulses and succeeded in removing most of the cleanser".

 

Climbing Balanced Rock or any named or unnamed arch in Arches National Park with an opening larger than 3 ft (0.9 m) is banned by park regulations. Climbing on other features in the park is allowed but regulated; in addition, slacklining and BASE jumping are banned parkwide.

 

Climbing on named arches within the park had long been banned by park regulations, but following Dean Potter's successful free climb on Delicate Arch in May 2006, the wording of the regulations was deemed unenforceable by the park attorney. In response, the park revised its regulations later that month, eventually imposing the current ban on arch climbing in 2014.

 

Approved recreational activities include auto touring, hiking, bicycling, camping at the Devils Garden campground, backpacking, canyoneering, and rock climbing, with permits required for the last three activities. Guided commercial tours and ranger programs are also available.

 

Astronomy is also popular in the park due to its dark skies, despite the increasing light pollution from towns such as Moab.

 

Delicate Arch is the subject of the third 2014 quarter of the U.S. Mint's America the Beautiful Quarters program commemorating national parks and historic sites. The Arches quarter had the highest production of the five 2014 national park quarters, with more than 465 million minted.

 

American writer Edward Abbey was a park ranger at Arches National Monument in 1956 and 1957, where he kept journals that became his book Desert Solitaire. The success of Abbey's book, as well as interest in adventure travel, has drawn many hikers, mountain bikers, and off-pavement driving enthusiasts to the area. Permitted activities within the park include camping, hiking along designated trails, backpacking, canyoneering, rock climbing, bicycling, and driving along existing roads, both paved and unpaved. The Hayduke Trail, an 812 mi (1,307 km) backpacking route named after one of Edward Abbey's characters, begins in the park.

 

An abundance of wildlife occurs in Arches National Park, including spadefoot toads, antelope squirrels, scrub jays, peregrine falcons, many kinds of sparrows, red foxes, desert bighorn sheep, kangaroo rats, mule deers, cougars, midget faded rattlesnakes, yucca moths, western rattlesnakes, and collared lizards.

 

A number of plant species are common in the park, including prickly pear cactus, Indian ricegrass, bunch grasses, cheatgrass, moss, liverworts, Utah juniper, Mormon tea, blackbrush, cliffrose, four-winged saltbrush, pinyon pine, evening primrose, sand verbena, yucca, and sacred datura.

 

Biological soil crust consisting of cyanobacteria, lichen, mosses, green algae, and microfungi is found throughout southeastern Utah. The fibrous growths help keep soil particles together, creating a layer that is more resistant to erosion. The living soil layer readily absorbs and stores water, allowing more complex forms of plant life to grow in places with low precipitation levels.

 

Among the notable features of the park are the following:

Balanced Rock – a large balancing rock, the size of three school buses

Courthouse Towers – a collection of tall stone columns

Dark Angel – a free-standing 150 ft-tall (46 m) sandstone pillar at the end of the Devils Garden Trail

Delicate Arch – a lone-standing arch that has become a symbol of Utah and the most recognized arch in the park

Devils Garden – many arches and columns scattered along a ridge

Double Arch – two arches that share a common end

Fiery Furnace – an area of maze-like narrow passages and tall rock columns (see biblical reference, Book of Daniel, chapter 3)

Landscape Arch – a very thin and long arch in the Devils Garden with a span of 290 ft (88 m) (the longest arch in the park)

Petrified Dunes – petrified remnants of dunes blown from the ancient lakes that covered the area

The Phallus – a rock spire that resembles a phallus

Wall Arch – located along the popular Devils Garden Trail; collapsed sometime on August 4/5, 2008

The Three Gossips –a mid-sized sandstone tower located in the Courthouse Towers area.

 

Utah is a landlocked state in the Mountain West subregion of the Western United States. It borders Colorado to its east, Wyoming to its northeast, Idaho to its north, Arizona to its south, and Nevada to its west. Utah also touches a corner of New Mexico in the southeast. Of the fifty U.S. states, Utah is the 13th-largest by area; with a population over three million, it is the 30th-most-populous and 11th-least-densely populated. Urban development is mostly concentrated in two areas: the Wasatch Front in the north-central part of the state, which is home to roughly two-thirds of the population and includes the capital city, Salt Lake City; and Washington County in the southwest, with more than 180,000 residents. Most of the western half of Utah lies in the Great Basin.

 

Utah has been inhabited for thousands of years by various indigenous groups such as the ancient Puebloans, Navajo, and Ute. The Spanish were the first Europeans to arrive in the mid-16th century, though the region's difficult geography and harsh climate made it a peripheral part of New Spain and later Mexico. Even while it was Mexican territory, many of Utah's earliest settlers were American, particularly Mormons fleeing marginalization and persecution from the United States via the Mormon Trail. Following the Mexican–American War in 1848, the region was annexed by the U.S., becoming part of the Utah Territory, which included what is now Colorado and Nevada. Disputes between the dominant Mormon community and the federal government delayed Utah's admission as a state; only after the outlawing of polygamy was it admitted in 1896 as the 45th.

 

People from Utah are known as Utahns. Slightly over half of all Utahns are Mormons, the vast majority of whom are members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church), which has its world headquarters in Salt Lake City; Utah is the only state where a majority of the population belongs to a single church. A 2023 paper challenged this perception (claiming only 42% of Utahns are Mormons) however most statistics still show a majority of Utah residents belong to the LDS church; estimates from the LDS church suggests 60.68% of Utah's population belongs to the church whilst some sources put the number as high as 68%. The paper replied that membership count done by the LDS Church is too high for several reasons. The LDS Church greatly influences Utahn culture, politics, and daily life, though since the 1990s the state has become more religiously diverse as well as secular.

 

Utah has a highly diversified economy, with major sectors including transportation, education, information technology and research, government services, mining, multi-level marketing, and tourism. Utah has been one of the fastest growing states since 2000, with the 2020 U.S. census confirming the fastest population growth in the nation since 2010. St. George was the fastest-growing metropolitan area in the United States from 2000 to 2005. Utah ranks among the overall best states in metrics such as healthcare, governance, education, and infrastructure. It has the 12th-highest median average income and the least income inequality of any U.S. state. Over time and influenced by climate change, droughts in Utah have been increasing in frequency and severity, putting a further strain on Utah's water security and impacting the state's economy.

 

The History of Utah is an examination of the human history and social activity within the state of Utah located in the western United States.

 

Archaeological evidence dates the earliest habitation of humans in Utah to about 10,000 to 12,000 years ago. Paleolithic people lived near the Great Basin's swamps and marshes, which had an abundance of fish, birds, and small game animals. Big game, including bison, mammoths and ground sloths, also were attracted to these water sources. Over the centuries, the mega-fauna died, this population was replaced by the Desert Archaic people, who sheltered in caves near the Great Salt Lake. Relying more on gathering than the previous Utah residents, their diet was mainly composed of cattails and other salt tolerant plants such as pickleweed, burro weed and sedge. Red meat appears to have been more of a luxury, although these people used nets and the atlatl to hunt water fowl, ducks, small animals and antelope. Artifacts include nets woven with plant fibers and rabbit skin, woven sandals, gaming sticks, and animal figures made from split-twigs. About 3,500 years ago, lake levels rose and the population of Desert Archaic people appears to have dramatically decreased. The Great Basin may have been almost unoccupied for 1,000 years.

 

The Fremont culture, named from sites near the Fremont River in Utah, lived in what is now north and western Utah and parts of Nevada, Idaho and Colorado from approximately 600 to 1300 AD. These people lived in areas close to water sources that had been previously occupied by the Desert Archaic people, and may have had some relationship with them. However, their use of new technologies define them as a distinct people. Fremont technologies include:

 

use of the bow and arrow while hunting,

building pithouse shelters,

growing maize and probably beans and squash,

building above ground granaries of adobe or stone,

creating and decorating low-fired pottery ware,

producing art, including jewelry and rock art such as petroglyphs and pictographs.

 

The ancient Puebloan culture, also known as the Anasazi, occupied territory adjacent to the Fremont. The ancestral Puebloan culture centered on the present-day Four Corners area of the Southwest United States, including the San Juan River region of Utah. Archaeologists debate when this distinct culture emerged, but cultural development seems to date from about the common era, about 500 years before the Fremont appeared. It is generally accepted that the cultural peak of these people was around the 1200 CE. Ancient Puebloan culture is known for well constructed pithouses and more elaborate adobe and masonry dwellings. They were excellent craftsmen, producing turquoise jewelry and fine pottery. The Puebloan culture was based on agriculture, and the people created and cultivated fields of maize, beans, and squash and domesticated turkeys. They designed and produced elaborate field terracing and irrigation systems. They also built structures, some known as kivas, apparently designed solely for cultural and religious rituals.

 

These two later cultures were roughly contemporaneous, and appear to have established trading relationships. They also shared enough cultural traits that archaeologists believe the cultures may have common roots in the early American Southwest. However, each remained culturally distinct throughout most of their existence. These two well established cultures appear to have been severely impacted by climatic change and perhaps by the incursion of new people in about 1200 CE. Over the next two centuries, the Fremont and ancient Pueblo people may have moved into the American southwest, finding new homes and farmlands in the river drainages of Arizona, New Mexico and northern Mexico.

 

In about 1200, Shoshonean speaking peoples entered Utah territory from the west. They may have originated in southern California and moved into the desert environment due to population pressure along the coast. They were an upland people with a hunting and gathering lifestyle utilizing roots and seeds, including the pinyon nut. They were also skillful fishermen, created pottery and raised some crops. When they first arrived in Utah, they lived as small family groups with little tribal organization. Four main Shoshonean peoples inhabited Utah country. The Shoshone in the north and northeast, the Gosiutes in the northwest, the Utes in the central and eastern parts of the region and the Southern Paiutes in the southwest. Initially, there seems to have been very little conflict between these groups.

 

In the early 16th century, the San Juan River basin in Utah's southeast also saw a new people, the Díne or Navajo, part of a greater group of plains Athabaskan speakers moved into the Southwest from the Great Plains. In addition to the Navajo, this language group contained people that were later known as Apaches, including the Lipan, Jicarilla, and Mescalero Apaches.

 

Athabaskans were a hunting people who initially followed the bison, and were identified in 16th-century Spanish accounts as "dog nomads". The Athabaskans expanded their range throughout the 17th century, occupying areas the Pueblo peoples had abandoned during prior centuries. The Spanish first specifically mention the "Apachu de Nabajo" (Navaho) in the 1620s, referring to the people in the Chama valley region east of the San Juan River, and north west of Santa Fe. By the 1640s, the term Navaho was applied to these same people. Although the Navajo newcomers established a generally peaceful trading and cultural exchange with the some modern Pueblo peoples to the south, they experienced intermittent warfare with the Shoshonean peoples, particularly the Utes in eastern Utah and western Colorado.

 

At the time of European expansion, beginning with Spanish explorers traveling from Mexico, five distinct native peoples occupied territory within the Utah area: the Northern Shoshone, the Goshute, the Ute, the Paiute and the Navajo.

 

The Spanish explorer Francisco Vázquez de Coronado may have crossed into what is now southern Utah in 1540, when he was seeking the legendary Cíbola.

 

A group led by two Spanish Catholic priests—sometimes called the Domínguez–Escalante expedition—left Santa Fe in 1776, hoping to find a route to the California coast. The expedition traveled as far north as Utah Lake and encountered the native residents. All of what is now Utah was claimed by the Spanish Empire from the 1500s to 1821 as part of New Spain (later as the province Alta California); and subsequently claimed by Mexico from 1821 to 1848. However, Spain and Mexico had little permanent presence in, or control of, the region.

 

Fur trappers (also known as mountain men) including Jim Bridger, explored some regions of Utah in the early 19th century. The city of Provo was named for one such man, Étienne Provost, who visited the area in 1825. The city of Ogden, Utah is named for a brigade leader of the Hudson's Bay Company, Peter Skene Ogden who trapped in the Weber Valley. In 1846, a year before the arrival of members from the Church of Jesus Christ of latter-day Saints, the ill-fated Donner Party crossed through the Salt Lake valley late in the season, deciding not to stay the winter there but to continue forward to California, and beyond.

 

Members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, commonly known as Mormon pioneers, first came to the Salt Lake Valley on July 24, 1847. At the time, the U.S. had already captured the Mexican territories of Alta California and New Mexico in the Mexican–American War and planned to keep them, but those territories, including the future state of Utah, officially became United States territory upon the signing of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, February 2, 1848. The treaty was ratified by the United States Senate on March 10, 1848.

 

Upon arrival in the Salt Lake Valley, the Mormon pioneers found no permanent settlement of Indians. Other areas along the Wasatch Range were occupied at the time of settlement by the Northwestern Shoshone and adjacent areas by other bands of Shoshone such as the Gosiute. The Northwestern Shoshone lived in the valleys on the eastern shore of Great Salt Lake and in adjacent mountain valleys. Some years after arriving in the Salt Lake Valley Mormons, who went on to colonize many other areas of what is now Utah, were petitioned by Indians for recompense for land taken. The response of Heber C. Kimball, first counselor to Brigham Young, was that the land belonged to "our Father in Heaven and we expect to plow and plant it." A 1945 Supreme Court decision found that the land had been treated by the United States as public domain; no aboriginal title by the Northwestern Shoshone had been recognized by the United States or extinguished by treaty with the United States.

 

Upon arriving in the Salt Lake Valley, the Mormons had to make a place to live. They created irrigation systems, laid out farms, built houses, churches, and schools. Access to water was crucially important. Almost immediately, Brigham Young set out to identify and claim additional community sites. While it was difficult to find large areas in the Great Basin where water sources were dependable and growing seasons long enough to raise vitally important subsistence crops, satellite communities began to be formed.

 

Shortly after the first company arrived in the Salt Lake Valley in 1847, the community of Bountiful was settled to the north. In 1848, settlers moved into lands purchased from trapper Miles Goodyear in present-day Ogden. In 1849, Tooele and Provo were founded. Also that year, at the invitation of Ute chief Wakara, settlers moved into the Sanpete Valley in central Utah to establish the community of Manti. Fillmore, Utah, intended to be the capital of the new territory, was established in 1851. In 1855, missionary efforts aimed at western native cultures led to outposts in Fort Lemhi, Idaho, Las Vegas, Nevada and Elk Mountain in east-central Utah.

 

The experiences of returning members of the Mormon Battalion were also important in establishing new communities. On their journey west, the Mormon soldiers had identified dependable rivers and fertile river valleys in Colorado, Arizona and southern California. In addition, as the men traveled to rejoin their families in the Salt Lake Valley, they moved through southern Nevada and the eastern segments of southern Utah. Jefferson Hunt, a senior Mormon officer of the Battalion, actively searched for settlement sites, minerals, and other resources. His report encouraged 1851 settlement efforts in Iron County, near present-day Cedar City. These southern explorations eventually led to Mormon settlements in St. George, Utah, Las Vegas and San Bernardino, California, as well as communities in southern Arizona.

 

Prior to establishment of the Oregon and California trails and Mormon settlement, Indians native to the Salt Lake Valley and adjacent areas lived by hunting buffalo and other game, but also gathered grass seed from the bountiful grass of the area as well as roots such as those of the Indian Camas. By the time of settlement, indeed before 1840, the buffalo were gone from the valley, but hunting by settlers and grazing of cattle severely impacted the Indians in the area, and as settlement expanded into nearby river valleys and oases, indigenous tribes experienced increasing difficulty in gathering sufficient food. Brigham Young's counsel was to feed the hungry tribes, and that was done, but it was often not enough. These tensions formed the background to the Bear River massacre committed by California Militia stationed in Salt Lake City during the Civil War. The site of the massacre is just inside Preston, Idaho, but was generally thought to be within Utah at the time.

 

Statehood was petitioned for in 1849-50 using the name Deseret. The proposed State of Deseret would have been quite large, encompassing all of what is now Utah, and portions of Colorado, Idaho, Nevada, Wyoming, Arizona, Oregon, New Mexico and California. The name of Deseret was favored by the LDS leader Brigham Young as a symbol of industry and was derived from a reference in the Book of Mormon. The petition was rejected by Congress and Utah did not become a state until 1896, following the Utah Constitutional Convention of 1895.

 

In 1850, the Utah Territory was created with the Compromise of 1850, and Fillmore (named after President Fillmore) was designated the capital. In 1856, Salt Lake City replaced Fillmore as the territorial capital.

 

The first group of pioneers brought African slaves with them, making Utah the only place in the western United States to have African slavery. Three slaves, Green Flake, Hark Lay, and Oscar Crosby, came west with this first group in 1847. The settlers also began to purchase Indian slaves in the well-established Indian slave trade, as well as enslaving Indian prisoners of war. In 1850, 26 slaves were counted in Salt Lake County. Slavery didn't become officially recognized until 1852, when the Act in Relation to Service and the Act for the relief of Indian Slaves and Prisoners were passed. Slavery was repealed on June 19, 1862, when Congress prohibited slavery in all US territories.

 

Disputes between the Mormon inhabitants and the federal government intensified after the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints' practice of polygamy became known. The polygamous practices of the Mormons, which were made public in 1854, would be one of the major reasons Utah was denied statehood until almost 50 years after the Mormons had entered the area.

 

After news of their polygamous practices spread, the members of the LDS Church were quickly viewed by some as un-American and rebellious. In 1857, after news of a possible rebellion spread, President James Buchanan sent troops on the Utah expedition to quell the growing unrest and to replace Brigham Young as territorial governor with Alfred Cumming. The expedition was also known as the Utah War.

 

As fear of invasion grew, Mormon settlers had convinced some Paiute Indians to aid in a Mormon-led attack on 120 immigrants from Arkansas under the guise of Indian aggression. The murder of these settlers became known as the Mountain Meadows massacre. The Mormon leadership had adopted a defensive posture that led to a ban on the selling of grain to outsiders in preparation for an impending war. This chafed pioneers traveling through the region, who were unable to purchase badly needed supplies. A disagreement between some of the Arkansas pioneers and the Mormons in Cedar City led to the secret planning of the massacre by a few Mormon leaders in the area. Some scholars debate the involvement of Brigham Young. Only one man, John D. Lee, was ever convicted of the murders, and he was executed at the massacre site.

 

Express riders had brought the news 1,000 miles from the Missouri River settlements to Salt Lake City within about two weeks of the army's beginning to march west. Fearing the worst as 2,500 troops (roughly 1/3rd of the army then) led by General Albert Sidney Johnston started west, Brigham Young ordered all residents of Salt Lake City and neighboring communities to prepare their homes for burning and evacuate southward to Utah Valley and southern Utah. Young also sent out a few units of the Nauvoo Legion (numbering roughly 8,000–10,000), to delay the army's advance. The majority he sent into the mountains to prepare defenses or south to prepare for a scorched earth retreat. Although some army wagon supply trains were captured and burned and herds of army horses and cattle run off no serious fighting occurred. Starting late and short on supplies, the United States Army camped during the bitter winter of 1857–58 near a burned out Fort Bridger in Wyoming. Through the negotiations between emissary Thomas L. Kane, Young, Cumming and Johnston, control of Utah territory was peacefully transferred to Cumming, who entered an eerily vacant Salt Lake City in the spring of 1858. By agreement with Young, Johnston established the army at Fort Floyd 40 miles away from Salt Lake City, to the southwest.

 

Salt Lake City was the last link of the First Transcontinental Telegraph, between Carson City, Nevada and Omaha, Nebraska completed in October 1861. Brigham Young, who had helped expedite construction, was among the first to send a message, along with Abraham Lincoln and other officials. Soon after the telegraph line was completed, the Deseret Telegraph Company built the Deseret line connecting the settlements in the territory with Salt Lake City and, by extension, the rest of the United States.

 

Because of the American Civil War, federal troops were pulled out of Utah Territory (and their fort auctioned off), leaving the territorial government in federal hands without army backing until General Patrick E. Connor arrived with the 3rd Regiment of California Volunteers in 1862. While in Utah, Connor and his troops soon became discontent with this assignment wanting to head to Virginia where the "real" fighting and glory was occurring. Connor established Fort Douglas just three miles (5 km) east of Salt Lake City and encouraged his bored and often idle soldiers to go out and explore for mineral deposits to bring more non-Mormons into the state. Minerals were discovered in Tooele County, and some miners began to come to the territory. Conner also solved the Shoshone Indian problem in Cache Valley Utah by luring the Shoshone into a midwinter confrontation on January 29, 1863. The armed conflict quickly turned into a rout, discipline among the soldiers broke down, and the Battle of Bear River is today usually referred to by historians as the Bear River Massacre. Between 200 and 400 Shoshone men, women and children were killed, as were 27 soldiers, with over 50 more soldiers wounded or suffering from frostbite.

 

Beginning in 1865, Utah's Black Hawk War developed into the deadliest conflict in the territory's history. Chief Antonga Black Hawk died in 1870, but fights continued to break out until additional federal troops were sent in to suppress the Ghost Dance of 1872. The war is unique among Indian Wars because it was a three-way conflict, with mounted Timpanogos Utes led by Antonga Black Hawk fighting federal and Utah local militia.

 

On May 10, 1869, the First transcontinental railroad was completed at Promontory Summit, north of the Great Salt Lake. The railroad brought increasing numbers of people into the state, and several influential businessmen made fortunes in the territory.

 

Main article: Latter Day Saint polygamy in the late-19th century

During the 1870s and 1880s, federal laws were passed and federal marshals assigned to enforce the laws against polygamy. In the 1890 Manifesto, the LDS Church leadership dropped its approval of polygamy citing divine revelation. When Utah applied for statehood again in 1895, it was accepted. Statehood was officially granted on January 4, 1896.

 

The Mormon issue made the situation for women the topic of nationwide controversy. In 1870 the Utah Territory, controlled by Mormons, gave women the right to vote. However, in 1887, Congress disenfranchised Utah women with the Edmunds–Tucker Act. In 1867–96, eastern activists promoted women's suffrage in Utah as an experiment, and as a way to eliminate polygamy. They were Presbyterians and other Protestants convinced that Mormonism was a non-Christian cult that grossly mistreated women. The Mormons promoted woman suffrage to counter the negative image of downtrodden Mormon women. With the 1890 Manifesto clearing the way for statehood, in 1895 Utah adopted a constitution restoring the right of women's suffrage. Congress admitted Utah as a state with that constitution in 1896.

 

Though less numerous than other intermountain states at the time, several lynching murders for alleged misdeeds occurred in Utah territory at the hand of vigilantes. Those documented include the following, with their ethnicity or national origin noted in parentheses if it was provided in the source:

 

William Torrington in Carson City (then a part of Utah territory), 1859

Thomas Coleman (Black man) in Salt Lake City, 1866

3 unidentified men at Wahsatch, winter of 1868

A Black man in Uintah, 1869

Charles A. Benson in Logan, 1873

Ah Sing (Chinese man) in Corinne, 1874

Thomas Forrest in St. George, 1880

William Harvey (Black man) in Salt Lake City, 1883

John Murphy in Park City, 1883

George Segal (Japanese man) in Ogden, 1884

Joseph Fisher in Eureka, 1886

Robert Marshall (Black man) in Castle Gate, 1925

Other lynchings in Utah territory include multiple instances of mass murder of Native American children, women, and men by White settlers including the Battle Creek massacre (1849), Provo River Massacre (1850), Nephi massacre (1853), and Circleville Massacre (1866).

 

Beginning in the early 20th century, with the establishment of such national parks as Bryce Canyon National Park and Zion National Park, Utah began to become known for its natural beauty. Southern Utah became a popular filming spot for arid, rugged scenes, and such natural landmarks as Delicate Arch and "the Mittens" of Monument Valley are instantly recognizable to most national residents. During the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s, with the construction of the Interstate highway system, accessibility to the southern scenic areas was made easier.

 

Beginning in 1939, with the establishment of Alta Ski Area, Utah has become world-renowned for its skiing. The dry, powdery snow of the Wasatch Range is considered some of the best skiing in the world. Salt Lake City won the bid for the 2002 Winter Olympics in 1995, and this has served as a great boost to the economy. The ski resorts have increased in popularity, and many of the Olympic venues scattered across the Wasatch Front continue to be used for sporting events. This also spurred the development of the light-rail system in the Salt Lake Valley, known as TRAX, and the re-construction of the freeway system around the city.

 

During the late 20th century, the state grew quickly. In the 1970s, growth was phenomenal in the suburbs. Sandy was one of the fastest-growing cities in the country at that time, and West Valley City is the state's 2nd most populous city. Today, many areas of Utah are seeing phenomenal growth. Northern Davis, southern and western Salt Lake, Summit, eastern Tooele, Utah, Wasatch, and Washington counties are all growing very quickly. Transportation and urbanization are major issues in politics as development consumes agricultural land and wilderness areas.

 

In 2012, the State of Utah passed the Utah Transfer of Public Lands Act in an attempt to gain control over a substantial portion of federal land in the state from the federal government, based on language in the Utah Enabling Act of 1894. The State does not intend to use force or assert control by limiting access in an attempt to control the disputed lands, but does intend to use a multi-step process of education, negotiation, legislation, and if necessary, litigation as part of its multi-year effort to gain state or private control over the lands after 2014.

 

Utah families, like most Americans everywhere, did their utmost to assist in the war effort. Tires, meat, butter, sugar, fats, oils, coffee, shoes, boots, gasoline, canned fruits, vegetables, and soups were rationed on a national basis. The school day was shortened and bus routes were reduced to limit the number of resources used stateside and increase what could be sent to soldiers.

 

Geneva Steel was built to increase the steel production for America during World War II. President Franklin D. Roosevelt had proposed opening a steel mill in Utah in 1936, but the idea was shelved after a couple of months. After the attack on Pearl Harbor, the United States entered the war and the steel plant was put into progress. In April 1944, Geneva shipped its first order, which consisted of over 600 tons of steel plate. Geneva Steel also brought thousands of job opportunities to Utah. The positions were hard to fill as many of Utah's men were overseas fighting. Women began working, filling 25 percent of the jobs.

 

As a result of Utah's and Geneva Steels contribution during the war, several Liberty Ships were named in honor of Utah including the USS Joseph Smith, USS Brigham Young, USS Provo, and the USS Peter Skene Ogden.

 

One of the sectors of the beachhead of Normandy Landings was codenamed Utah Beach, and the amphibious landings at the beach were undertaken by United States Army troops.

 

It is estimated that 1,450 soldiers from Utah were killed in the war.

In 2001, Karl Glazebrook and Ivan Baldry determined that the average colour of the universe was a greenish white. It came to light just a year later that they corrected their own flawed analysis and reported that their survey of the light from over 200,000 galaxies averaged to a slightly beigeish white.

 

It turns out that wasn't even the focus of their studies but I guess sometimes you learn what life throws your way. Now, quite what that means for us I'm not quite sure. It's actually been called 'cosmic latte' which sounds better than beige. Saying that I had to work with 'sahara beige' as that was the closest colour match I could find. So there you have it.

 

Created on A2 paper using the magic of spraypaint, stencils and imagination. Drop us a line if you'd like to give this bad boy a new home...

 

Love

 

id-iom

A female Kob at Shai Hills, Ghana, West Africa. The Kob is an antelope found across sub-Saharan Africa. Females have shoulder heights of 82–92 cm (2.69–3.02 ft) and weigh on average 63 kg (139 lb).

 

Thanks for your visit… Any comment you make on my photograph is greatly appreciated and encouraging! But please do not use this image without permission.

Sympetrum flaveolum, female

Size: 32 mm

 

This early morning stack is a close study of the dorsal thorax (synthorax) and wing bases of this female yellow-winged darter.

 

The large yellow or amber spots at the wing bases makes this this species easy to ID. It is on average a tiny bit smaller than the common darter (Sympetrum striolatum).

 

37 natural light exposures stacked in Zerene stacker.

 

5DmkII + MP-E 65 @ 3X, 1/4s, f/5.6, ISO100.

 

View larger!

9301 pushes up the rear of TM92 with 9306 leading into Robertson as they reach the summit of the Illawarra Escarpment before descending.

 

Robertson, NSW.

 

Saturday 27 September 2014.

Just your average gun-slinging cowboy.

Calgarys Best Towing

  

Address: Suite 65 4040 Blackfoot Trail S.E, Calgary, AB, T2G 4E6, Canada

Email: calgarysbestowing@gmail.com

 

Calgary's Best Towing is far from your average run of the mill towing and roadside service. When you call us direct at 1587-317-6005, we will make sure to treat you like family, because that is how we feel about our clients. At the end of the day anyone would do anything for "family". We believe in professionalism and putting our customers first. It's this same belief that makes us work harder, smarter, and faster to aid you in your sticky situations. With this silent code of ethics, we strive to be the best choice for you. At Calgary's Best Towing, we are optimistic and hope that the good people of Calgary, Alberta are having a fantastic day and let nothing derail them. Even when life throws curve balls, Calgary's Best Towing will make the situation less stressful and let you put all the weight on our shoulders. We believe in taking full responsibility on any mishaps that can occur on the road. You might just look at us as a towing company with an array of services, but instead look at us as your big brother and trust that we have your back. Every situation brought to us is treated on the same level of urgency. Doesn't matter how big or small the call is about, we dispatch the most qualified and over achieving technicians to fix you right up! Calgary's Best Towing is here 24 hours a day, seven days a week and we're not going anywhere! Your experience with us will guarantee to be swift and easy with quick response times, quality service, and cheap rates in the local area. This company is the Mona Lisa of towing, and the people who reach out to us can attest to this 100%. We want you to feel comfortable at Calgary's Best Towing, so we have put the best customer care receptionists to handle your call. By the time our call is over and were heading to the scene, you will feel a certain clarity that you are in the hands of the best, and everything will be groovy soon. We fully respect your time and aim for efficiency on every matter. Our staff is equipped to handle a vast array of scenario's. With a long list of experience under our belt, we know all the in's and outs of the business. Getting you roadworthy and safe to go is our utmost priority when arriving at the situation. We know it's a headache when you get a flat tire and have no idea how to change it, or when you find yourself run off the road and in need of ditch recovery rescue. We can do it all so don't worry yourself into a frenzy. We have several towing strategies and scrap/junk removal for great prices. Service calls are quite common like vehicle unlocking, jump starts, and gas delivery is not a problem at all. We love to serve anyone who calls for help at Calgary's Best Towing.

  

When the best is on their way, you can ask for the response time and sit back. Leading this industry and aiming to revolutionize it is our long term goal. You do come first, and that goes through the heads of everybody working on this immaculate team. We record every call for customer satisfaction and are improving ways to better serve the people of our proud city. Our call to care can be felt when interacting with any of our awesome technicians and call associates. We are number 1 in understanding our clients and catering to their needs! We hope that you don't have many sticky situations leaving you roadside often. Nothing's perfect, we all deal with some unsatisfying moments. They never last for long, -remember that. We hope that if one day you do need some assistance, you think of us. We will always welcome you with open arms! If you already love us haha, we would greatly appreciate any referrals you may have. A bonus can be claimed for helping us that way. Thank you very much, and God bless! Our service ranges from Calgary, Okotoks, High River, Dewinton, Longview, Black Diamond, Priddis, Millarville, Bragg Creek, Cayley, and Heritage Point.

 

The services this company provide Include:

 

Towing Services

Roadside Assistance

Vehicle Unlocking

Flat Tire Changes

Battery Jump-Start

Off Road Ditch Recovery

Gas Delivery

Feel free to check out our website for more info: www.calgarysbestowing.net/

 

Call us here:1587 317-6005

 

Work hours: 7 AM - 7 AM, 7 days a week

Payment Methods: Visa card, Master Card, Credit Card

Facebook: www.facebook.com/calgarysbestowing/

Google+ : plus.google.com/112647498972119019897

Linkedin: ca.linkedin.com/in/tom-buchanan-20b27310b

A mean average amalgamation of the entire video Word Crimes by Weird Al.

 

my blog

PIXLS.US

Westgate Freeway, March 2012

Spotter: Robbie

 

Revised commentry.

 

"Anything but average" the Leyland P76. It won wheels car of the year 1973. Under 20,000 were produced. You could fit a 44 gallon drum in the boot. Last produced in NZ in 1975.

 

This one has mag wheels and could be the best Leyland P76 in Australia.

 

We want YOU! LIKE us on FACEBOOK!

www.facebook.com/anocsc

For the past 2~3 years, we've been averaging heading out to the mountains every other week. This year happens to be Canada's big 150th birthday and you can get a free National Park Pass in celebration. The missus is doing a series of her travel buddy Mr. Takoyaki enjoying our awesome National Parks. So, my current cell phone testing has revolved quite a bit around the national parks as well.

 

This shot represents what most people should see for maximum dynamic range. For the most part, unless you're shooting a window scene, the furthest highlights and shadows should be are presented by scenes partially lit by sunlight and partially in the shade. I would say it did pretty well and it even retained a nice blue sky. Previously, I remember cell phones and even point-and-shoot cameras completely blowing out the sky turning it into a white mess.

 

14 of 24

 

www.wilsonhui.com

Inspired by the amazing work of Jason Salavon.

 

blog post about how to do it with ImageMagick

 

my blog

Sep. 10, 2022: The 9/11 Memorial Waves of Flags at Pepperdine University is on display. The nearly 3,000 flags - one for each person killed in the Sep. 11, 2001 terror attacks - were installed last night. The Waves of Flags, at the intersection of Pacific Coast Highway and Malibu Canyon Road, will be on display through Friday, Sept. 23, 2022. Average Camera Pro on iPhone.

The Rendsburg High Bridge (in German: "Rendsburger Hochbrücke") with its suspension ferry (in German: "Schwebefähre") crossing the Kiel Canal (in German: "Nord-Ostsee-Kanal") on the left, Rendsburg, Schleswig-Holstein, Germany

 

Some background information:

 

The Rendsburg High Bridge (officially: "Eisenbahnhochbrücke Rendsburg") is a railway viaduct on the Neumünster–Flensburg line that also serves as a transporter bridge. The bridge, which is made out of steel, crosses the Kiel Canal at Rendsburg in the German state of Schleswig-Holstein. It is owned by the Federal Water and Navigation Administration that also owns and runs the canal.

 

The Kiel Canal (formerly known as the "Kaiser-Wilhelm-Kanal") is a 98 km (61 miles) long freshwater canal in the German state of Schleswig-Holstein. The canal was finished in 1895, but later widened. It links the North Sea at Brunsbüttel to the Baltic Sea at Kiel-Holtenau. An average of 460 km (290 miles) is saved by using the Kiel Canal instead of going around the Jutland Peninsula. This not only saves time but also avoids storm-prone seas and having to pass through the Danish straits. The Kiel Canal is one of the world's most frequented artificial waterways with an annual average of 32,000 ships (90 daily), transporting approximately 100 million tons of goods.

 

The first connection between the North and Baltic Seas was constructed while the area was ruled by Denmark–Norway. It was called the Eider Canal and used stretches of the Eider river for the link between the two seas. Completed during the reign of Christian VII of Denmark in 1784, the Eider Canal was a 43 km (27 miles) part of a 175 km (109 miles) waterway from Kiel to the Eider river's mouth at Tönning on the west coast. It was only 29 m (95 feet) wide with a depth of 3 m (9.8 feet), which limited the vessels that could use the canal to 300 tons.

 

After 1864, the Second Schleswig War put Schleswig-Holstein under the government of Prussia (from 1871 the German Empire). A new canal was sought by merchants and by the German navy, which wanted to link its bases in the Baltic and the North Sea without the need to sail around Denmark. In June 1887, construction started at Holtenau, near Kiel. The canal took over 9,000 workers eight years to build. In 1895, emperor Wilhelm II officially opened the canal for transiting from Brunsbüttel to Holtenau. The next day a ceremony took place in Holtenau, where Wilhelm II named the waterway the Kaiser-Wilhelm-Kanal (after his grandfather, emperor Wilhelm I), and laid the final stone.

 

To cope with the increasing traffic and the demands of the Imperial German Navy, between 1907 and 1914 the canal was widened by Germany to allow dreadnought battleships to pass through. Two larger canal locks in Brunsbüttel and Holtenau were installed to complete the enlargement. After World War I, the Treaty of Versailles required the canal to be open to vessels of commerce and of war of any nation at peace with Germany, while leaving it under German administration. Only the United States opposed this proposal to avoid setting a precedent for similar concessions on the Panama Canal. The government under Adolf Hitler repudiated its international status in 1936, but the canal was reopened to all traffic after World War II. In 1948, its current name was adopted.

 

The canal is governed by detailed traffic rules. Each vessel using the canal is categorized into one of six traffic groups according to its dimensions. Larger ships are obliged to accept pilots and specialized canal helmsmen, in some cases even the assistance of a tugboat. Furthermore, there are regulations regarding the passing of oncoming ships. Larger ships may also be required to moor at the bollards provided at intervals along the canal to allow the passage of oncoming vessels. All permanent, fixed bridges crossing the canal since its construction have a clearance of 42 m (138 feet).

 

Maximum length for ships passing the Kiel Canal is 235.50 m (772.6 feet), with the maximum width (beam) of 32.50 m (106.6 feet). These ships can have a draught of up to 7.00 m (22.97 feet). Ships up to a length of 160.00 m (524.93 feet) may have a draught up to 9.50 m (31.2 feet). The bulker Ever Leader (deadweight 74,001 t) is considered to be the cargo ship that to date has come closest to the overall limits.

 

When the Kiel Canal was built, it cutted through existing traffic lines including the railway line between Neumünster and Flensburg for which two parallel swing bridges were erected. Main railway lines had right of way over ships on the canal and ships had to stop, losing about half an hour when a train passed. This was considered the major obstacle as the ships were unable to overtake and could pass each other at dedicated enlarged areas so that the traffic on the entire canal was hampered. Especially the navy pressed for a separation of traffic flows as closed bridges could delay flotillas by several hours.

 

In order to allow the railway line to pass above the canal, the new railway bridge was to have a clearance of 42 metres over the canal's mean water level. It was erected between 1911 and 1913 to a design by the civil engineer Friedrich Voss and replaced the earlier swing bridges. The steel viaduct has a length of 2,486 metres (8,156 feet) and is supplemented by embankments that bring the overall length of the structure to about 7.5 kilometres (4.7 miles). The cantilever main bridge is 317 metres (1,040 feet) long, has a main span of 140 metres (460 feet).

 

To serve Rendsburg station, situated at ground level only a couple of hundred metres from the main bridge, the railway line is routed through a large 360-degree loop on the north bank of the canal. The total cost of the construction, including the relocation of railway lines but excluding work related to the elevation of Rendsburg station, was 13.4 million Mark Today, this figure would correspond to roughly 66 million Euro. It included 5.7 million Mark for bridges, 2.7 million Mark for the mounds and 1.3 million Mark for underpasses and the relocation of roads.

 

The suspension ferry is already in operation since the bridge’s opening in 1913. Since then even its timetable was never changed. It runs daily every 15 minutes from early morning until late at night. It covers a distance of 125 metres (410 feet) within 1½ minutes and provides the shortest connection between the municipality of Osterrönfeld and the town of Rendsburg. As this means of transportation is especially useful to students on their way to school, larger maintenance work that requires suspension of service is coordinated with school holidays.

 

The gondola is fourteen metres long and six metres wide, and travels six metres above the canal. In recent years the nominal transport capacity has been reduced from six to four automobiles in order to factor in increased car size and weight. While the gondola is equipped with nautical equipment such as radio, radar and life-rafts, there is no prerequisite for the operator to hold a master's licence for inland navigation.

 

The suspension ferry met with two major accidents: During a storm in 1993, the unmanned and unlit gondola broke loose at night, was blown over the canal and collided with a ship. But both ship and gondola suffered only minor damage. In 2016 the gondola of the transporter bridge collided with the general cargo ship Evert Prahm and was heavily damaged. Two people, the waterman and the only passenger, were injured. After that, the suspension ferry was demounted and moved to a shipyard, but was found to be irreparably damaged. Construction of its replacement (optically almost true to original) began in 2020 and service resumed in 2022.

 

At the time, the Rendsburg High Bridge was built, it was regarded as a prime example of the German art of engineering. In 2013, it was awarded a "Historic Icon of German art of Engineering" (in German: "Historisches Wahrzeichen der Ingenieursbaukunst in Deutschland") by the German Chamber of Engineers and hence, also by the Federal Government of Germany. By the way, whenever a ship passes through the Rendsburg High Bridge, it is welcomed by a loudspeaker announcement, the sound of a bugle and last but not least the national anthem of the country, under whose flag it sails. You can imagine that watching the different ships passing by is quite entertaining.

 

GEORGIA - SUICIDE OR SUICIDE PREVENTION?

  

WELCOME TO THE ALMOST-UNKNOWN

 

To the average Westerner, there is a not-so-well-known piece of land stuffed in by the Black Sea and the Caucasus Mountains called Georgia. It is hard to describe where Georgia and the Georgians fit in, appearance-wise and culturally being European – think Jesus (culturally speaking) and red wine (and they pretty much invented both). Only physically the country sits in Asia, therefore being a bit an offcut, sometimes being classified as part of Europe and sometimes as part of Asia – you can decide on that one. I’m not going to reveal every detail about Georgia because that is what Wikipedia and Lonely Planet are for. I do not do travel guides and tourist reviews, except, I might just mention that it is a stunning little place that has not been discovered by the tourist masses yet – Amen, let’s have a wine to that!

 

But, then maybe it should be better known? I like Georgia. I like the fact I can stay here visa-free for 365 days, and buy a home and set up a business without restrictions – if I wanted to. I like that everything is inexpensive and easy. I love the fact that it only takes twenty minutes to get a car registered in your name by only showing your passport, thus being the reason I bought my car here. I felt quite proud setting out to conquer the world in a Georgian flagged car - the Georgian number plates turned many heads the whole way from Turkey to Morocco, but the head-turning was probably more likely due to the fact that the steering wheel is on the wrong side. In Georgia, you drive on the right-hand side of the road (like everywhere in Europe), but since they import cars from both east and west, steering wheels are on both the left and the right. Mine is a Japanese import (a right-hand drive) meaning I awkwardly go around seeing grass more than anything else. Very nice views indeed, but passing can be challenge at times, but I got used to it – as with every other challenge life has ever presented. At the car registration office - which is conveniently located inside the big second hand car market in Rustavi - they gave me a little driver’s license-like card (car ownership card) in which acts as the car’s ‘passport’, and that coupled with my own passport allowed me to get from one country to the next – I technically had no issues with that from the Georgian-Turkish border all the way to the Sahara Desert in Africa. Any issue that did arise was only because of some ‘official’ merely being an official asshole. Those exist from time to time, but not so much in Georgia.

 

In the summer of July 2016, I brought my Chinese students to Georgia for three exceptional weeks. We stayed a week each in the crumbling old town of Tbilisi, on the semi-subtropical Black Sea coast near Turkey and high up in the Caucasus Mountains in a green alpine valley covered in summer wild flowers. The scenery was quite dramatic. We raided little bakeries of their cheese pies whenever we could. They are cheap. We grinded ourselves like millet between aggressive waves and the rocky shores of the coastline and almost floated off visa-free to Turkey. That was fun. And the Georgians are very, very friendly. It’s the type of country where you can spend the days as you like; lay drunk in a church garden, sit under a grapevine with a book, sip a latte at coffee shop table by the street (their coffee kind of sucks actually), be forced to drink a cognac with the bus driver as you fly around the mountainous bends… These were some of the reasons that pulled me back in September, alone though, the second time around.

 

And lastly, and most importantly, I like the fact that, with Georgia, you can be in a European country and still be able to find freedom from of a heavy, burden-like energy. It is a place in which the human being still comes before rules. It is a place where God is still more important than regulations. It is a society that is still more humanistic than robotic. A place where health is in the heart and not in the insurance policy. It is one of the last places left where white people are not suppressing themselves into square boxes and straight lines and defining every last inch of themselves and their lifestyles by categories and labels. It’s a place where people can live and let live, in the more natural sense. Most importantly, it is a place where you can breathe; a place where you can surrender to your natural instincts.

  

WISDOM LIES IN THE ROADS?

 

Any civilization with centuries of experience in survival in the midst of mountainous terrain with rogue neighbours all around (think: Ottoman Empire/Turkey, the Soviet Union/Russia, Persia/Iran) certainly would have some valuable wisdom to share. Architecture, alcohol and photos aside, it is my goal to dig out something deeper. Worthwhile lessons from other lands is what I am searching for. We would be wiser to run our lives and societies like big companies that become worth billions by imitating others and then adapting and improving on what we have learnt. Absorbing wisdom from far-reaching corners of the globe is what any smart person or society should do. So, with an idea in my head, car keys in hand, and with a goal to expose humanity’s more unfortunate sides, it was time to get behind the wheel and head into the frenzy of the Georgian roads!

 

When driving, or purchasing any type of ticket for road transport in Georgia you might feel as if you are applying to go on the suicide waiting list, but Georgian roads just may be a cure to suicide. The way the Georgians drive can probably be best described as ‘dangerous’. Georgian drivers are fast, erratic and aggressive with all their stunts conducted through cracked windscreens. In fact, it seems that half their cars have lost half their parts and it’s almost common to see two doors on a Lada chassis fly down the road - with haystacks on top. The general road rule is ‘stick to the side of the road’ (off the side in the dust is okay too) and allow the middle to be a creative zone, even around sharp bends at night – as long as whatever it is, is done fast, you can’t really go wrong. This is no worries for the Georgians because driving is like art - it is almost like an improvising time for a group of musicians. I drove in China for six years which at times can be exhilarating, and in many parts of the world with ‘uncivilized’ streets (to the Western eyes) and I can say that I rejoice in the chaos. I’m the last person in the world to want to say something is ‘dangerous’, but, Georgia… my dear Georgia… you’re in a league of your own and I LOVE IT!!

  

IS DANGER ACTUALLY DANGER?

 

Some find the act of reading a book to be relaxing. Many find reading to be tiring and quite stressful. I am one of the latter ones. Many might say driving is tiring and stressful, and that reading is a relaxing way to escape to another place. But in the ideal feminized society that modern-day Westerners are trying to create, everyone would be able to relieve stress by reading a novel, but thankfully, many people (particularly men) are unable to get their all stimulation from books (and thank Georgian Jesus for that if someday war were to encroach because throwing all your books at enemies would not help much). Georgians bring Jihad to the roads, and for me, the more chaotic and aggressive the roads are, the more relaxed I become. Words from a book just don’t flow through me like the movement of humans and vehicles battling for the same space does. This is also when my natural instincts set in. I love to be in control of, not only the car, but my life as well. I love having to concentrate. I love the stimulation of it. I love the sense of achievement it brings when arriving at where I was going – it is like winning a grand-prix. I love the adrenalin rush of Georgian roads. More often than not, I want (read: need) to feel my heart beating, my palms sweating, my blood rushing, the butterflies in my stomach. I want to remember I'm alive!

 

Everyone needs to feel alive in order to ‘be alive’ and live a healthy, fulfilled life. The modern over-controlled society of the West causes frustration and creates barriers and road blocks, hence allowing for more time and energy for road rage and the likes. The boredom leads to a lack of concentration. A lack of concentration leads to accidents. When we disengage from our instincts, it gives rise to more issues instead of solving the ones we set out to. We no longer understand the root causes of societal problems, because we have become so disconnected from our natures. We no longer understand the world from our intuition, but only from ideologies. Our brains have well advanced above our hearts leaving us lost and confused. Our brains categorize things so strongly now that we no longer know what we are categorizing. In turn, roads in the West have become a place of rules and misery. What happened to the fact that roads were invented for ‘going places’ as their main purpose?

  

AN ILLNESS OF MODERN WESTERN SOCIETY

 

I probably just seemed to be suggesting that you might have a good chance of killing yourself if you get within ten inches of any Georgian road, but in fact, I am implying the opposite – Georgian roads just may well be an example of a cure to suicide, and other miseries that the developed world suffers from these days. There may seem to be a paradox here, but things generally are the opposite of what they appear to be. When facing difficulty and danger, you need to give a top performance – no one swims lazily with a shark fin in tow. When you are in full concentration mode, all your senses become alive and alert. When you have survived the moment, you have a sense of accomplishment. When you have a combination of these ‘daily necessities’ (the ones that are not available at the supermarket) you start inching closer to a little friend called ‘nature’ - that forgotten thing that inherently lives within us. Humans have come a long way, we’ve forgone dangers to revel in the security of modern-day life, but it is boring. Modern life is boring. Excitement, adrenalin, fun; gone to the pits of safety. To fight, to battle, to use your brain, your body, your skills, your senses – all at the same time - there is no more of that, because it’s not allowed, not tolerated. It’s easy to see and provide for human being’s physical needs such as fresh food, clean water and oxygen, but the psychological needs of creativity, challenge, decision making and stimulation during everyday activity have not only been forgotten, but they have been banished to the darkest corners of hell – all in the name of safety.

  

SUICIDE OR SUICIDE PREVENTION?

  

The post WW2 feminizing of society has already served its benefits; people are more passive, society more equal, women have taken up more positions, marriage equality achieved and the list goes on, but this movement should now deactivate as it seems that its last purpose to achieve is to obliviously drag us by the teeth to a cliff’s edge. This nannying is running rife and, in effect, it is the source of many people’s depression, boredom, frustration and, in some cases, desperation. It’s not only suffocating, but it is against our survival instincts. The reason we still quiver when we think of a snake is because we still have nature inside us, but we don’t hesitate about getting into a car despite the overwhelming global statistics in car related deaths. So, sorry to say, but our nature (and the snake-quivering) is not going anywhere, but the fear of fun definitely needs to go…

 

I do not know of anyone who would ponder over the idea of suicide while feeling stimulated. Georgians commit suicide too, and are definitely not immune to misery, but they are certainly not being robbed of the simple human needs for excitement and danger. In fact, Georgian suicide rates rank among the lowest and the traffic related death rate is not excruciatingly high (although a bit higher than the most developed countries, but this could be down to geographic and financial reasons too - Georgia is being significantly poorer and steeper). Georgian drivers are highly skilled and take necessary precautions at every bend in the road, because they have to. Having to do something and just doing something are two very different concepts with very different outcomes. Georgian drivers are self-taught, well practiced with refined skill, and they make decisions based on the situation rather than the rule. It is the same idea as a person taking extra safety precautions while on a bicycle, knowing that the likelihood of getting bowled over is significantly higher. Keep in mind that musicians also get more orgasms out of improvising than playing along to a tune set out by someone else, because they are relying on something deeper; their senses, their feelings, their emotions. As kids, we are often told to slow down, so we correlate ‘slow’ with being safe, but it is not always so. Sometimes fast is safe. Sometimes danger equals carefulness. My cat only fell out the 9th floor window because it didn’t learn how to climb. Insulation and safety of the poor white mutt lead to the end of it. This insulation not only leads to the inability to foresee danger and react to it, but in effect, it makes us not only depressed but… stupider.

  

PUTTING SOME GEORGIA INTO OUR OWN LIVES

 

Georgian ex-president Mikhail Saakashvili turned his country around from the crime-ridden, corrupt, ex-Soviet police state that it was once. Jeez, this was even the place that gave birth to Stalin. After eventually being voted out, Saakashvili moved to Ukraine to help rid that country of its infestation of political crime and corruption. It is possible for a country and society to turn itself around, Georgia did it. I wonder if Saakashvili has time to come and oil the rusted Westerners, steer the West onto the path of logic; a road to something a bit healthier, a bit more sustainable, something a bit more exciting? Elements of difficulty need to be released back into society so that our survival instincts can be kicked back into gear. The feeling of being alive needs to be promoted. The nannying culture needs to be sent back to nurseries. Luckily for Georgia, it still faces enough difficulties to keep it down to earth and bit more realistic.

 

Maybe we could start by crushing half of the ministers and ministries and replacing them with a Ministry of Stimulation, perhaps? Maybe ex-Georgian president Mikhail Saakashvili could even head it. Stalin can be given a pass on that one. It amazes me that humans can build airplanes and spaceships to whip us around the earth and even to the moon, but what astounds me is that the most simple and obvious solutions to easy-to-solve issues can still be so puzzlingly far off. This level of human stupidity on display is equal to a duck quacking into a pipe believing the echo to be a friend. If we are aware of these issues (and admit they exist), we will continue to flourish as a great civilization. If not, we will have led ourselves to disaster through oblivion, because while the Western world nannies around, the rest of the world is gearing up, reinvigorating itself. The West is walking itself into sedation, uninterested in life, believing that all forms of strength are weaknesses. Being out of touch can only give rise to the rogue ones around us – ask Georgia. We seem to have a collective suicide wish, and that seems to be the only thing uniting us. Have our lives been too comfortable for too long that we have lost our minds? And do we now need a massive disaster to occur to unleash the Georgian driver within us?

Capitol Reef National Park is an American national park in south-central Utah. The park is approximately 60 miles (97 km) long on its north–south axis and just 6 miles (9.7 km) wide on average. The park was established in 1971 to preserve 241,904 acres (377.98 sq mi; 97,895.08 ha; 978.95 km2) of desert landscape and is open all year, with May through September being the highest visitation months.

 

Partially in Wayne County, Utah, the area was originally named "Wayne Wonderland" in the 1920s by local boosters Ephraim P. Pectol and Joseph S. Hickman. Capitol Reef National Park was designated a national monument on August 2, 1937, by President Franklin D. Roosevelt to protect the area's colorful canyons, ridges, buttes, and monoliths; however, it was not until 1950 that the area officially opened to the public. Road access was improved in 1962 with the construction of State Route 24 through the Fremont River Canyon.

 

The majority of the nearly 100 mi (160 km) long up-thrust formation called the Waterpocket Fold—a rocky spine extending from Thousand Lake Mountain to Lake Powell—is preserved within the park. Capitol Reef is an especially rugged and spectacular segment of the Waterpocket Fold by the Fremont River. The park was named for its whitish Navajo Sandstone cliffs with dome formations—similar to the white domes often placed on capitol buildings—that run from the Fremont River to Pleasant Creek on the Waterpocket Fold. Locally, reef refers to any rocky barrier to land travel, just as ocean reefs are barriers to sea travel.

 

Capitol Reef encompasses the Waterpocket Fold, a warp in the earth's crust that is 65 million years old. It is the largest exposed monocline in North America. In this fold, newer and older layers of earth folded over each other in an S-shape. This warp, probably caused by the same colliding continental plates that created the Rocky Mountains, has weathered and eroded over millennia to expose layers of rock and fossils. The park is filled with brilliantly colored sandstone cliffs, gleaming white domes, and contrasting layers of stone and earth.

 

The area was named for a line of white domes and cliffs of Navajo Sandstone, each of which looks somewhat like the United States Capitol building, that run from the Fremont River to Pleasant Creek on the Waterpocket Fold.

 

The fold forms a north-to-south barrier that has barely been breached by roads. Early settlers referred to parallel impassable ridges as "reefs", from which the park gets the second half of its name. The first paved road was constructed through the area in 1962. State Route 24 cuts through the park traveling east and west between Canyonlands National Park and Bryce Canyon National Park, but few other paved roads invade the rugged landscape.

 

The park is filled with canyons, cliffs, towers, domes, and arches. The Fremont River has cut canyons through parts of the Waterpocket Fold, but most of the park is arid desert. A scenic drive shows park visitors some highlights, but it runs only a few miles from the main highway. Hundreds of miles of trails and unpaved roads lead into the equally scenic backcountry.

 

Fremont-culture Native Americans lived near the perennial Fremont River in the northern part of the Capitol Reef Waterpocket Fold around the year 1000. They irrigated crops of maize and squash and stored their grain in stone granaries (in part made from the numerous black basalt boulders that litter the area). In the 13th century, all of the Native American cultures in this area underwent sudden change, likely due to a long drought. The Fremont settlements and fields were abandoned.

 

Many years after the Fremont left, Paiutes moved into the area. These Numic-speaking people named the Fremont granaries moki huts and thought they were the homes of a race of tiny people or moki.

 

In 1872 Almon H. Thompson, a geographer attached to United States Army Major John Wesley Powell's expedition, crossed the Waterpocket Fold while exploring the area. Geologist Clarence Dutton later spent several summers studying the area's geology. None of these expeditions explored the Waterpocket Fold to any great extent.

 

Following the American Civil War, officials of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Salt Lake City sought to establish missions in the remotest niches of the Intermountain West. In 1866, a quasi-military expedition of Mormons in pursuit of natives penetrated the high valleys to the west. In the 1870s, settlers moved into these valleys, eventually establishing Loa, Fremont, Lyman, Bicknell, and Torrey.

 

Mormons settled the Fremont River valley in the 1880s and established Junction (later renamed Fruita), Caineville, and Aldridge. Fruita prospered, Caineville barely survived, and Aldridge died. In addition to farming, lime was extracted from local limestone, and uranium was extracted early in the 20th century. In 1904 the first claim to a uranium mine in the area was staked. The resulting Oyler Mine in Grand Wash produced uranium ore.

 

By 1920 no more than ten families at one time were sustained by the fertile flood plain of the Fremont River and the land changed ownership over the years. The area remained isolated. The community was later abandoned and later still some buildings were restored by the National Park Service. Kilns once used to produce lime are still in Sulphur Creek and near the campgrounds on Scenic Drive.

 

Local Ephraim Portman Pectol organized a "booster club" in Torrey in 1921. Pectol pressed a promotional campaign, furnishing stories to be sent to periodicals and newspapers. In his efforts, he was increasingly aided by his brother-in-law, Joseph S. Hickman, who was the Wayne County High School principal. In 1924, Hickman extended community involvement in the promotional effort by organizing a Wayne County-wide Wayne Wonderland Club. That same year, Hickman was elected to the Utah State Legislature.

 

In 1933, Pectol was elected to the presidency of the Associated Civics Club of Southern Utah, successor to the Wayne Wonderland Club. The club raised U.S. $150 (equivalent to $3,391 in 2022) to interest a Salt Lake City photographer in taking a series of promotional photographs. For several years, the photographer, J. E. Broaddus, traveled and lectured on "Wayne Wonderland".

 

In 1933, Pectol was elected to the legislature and almost immediately contacted President Franklin D. Roosevelt and asked for the creation of "Wayne Wonderland National Monument" out of the federal lands comprising the bulk of the Capitol Reef area. Federal agencies began a feasibility study and boundary assessment. Meanwhile, Pectol guided the government investigators on numerous trips and escorted an increasing number of visitors. The lectures of Broaddus were having an effect.

 

Roosevelt signed a proclamation creating Capitol Reef National Monument on August 2, 1937. In Proclamation 2246, President Roosevelt set aside 37,711 acres (15,261 ha) of the Capitol Reef area. This comprised an area extending about two miles (3 km) north of present State Route 24 and about 10 mi (16 km) south, just past Capitol Gorge. The Great Depression years were lean ones for the National Park Service (NPS), the new administering agency. Funds for the administration of Capitol Reef were nonexistent; it would be a long time before the first rangers would arrive.

 

Administration of the new monument was placed under the control of Zion National Park. A stone ranger cabin and the Sulphur Creek bridge were built and some road work was performed by the Civilian Conservation Corps and the Works Progress Administration. Historian and printer Charles Kelly came to know NPS officials at Zion well and volunteered to watchdog the park for the NPS. Kelly was officially appointed custodian-without-pay in 1943. He worked as a volunteer until 1950, when the NPS offered him a civil-service appointment as the first superintendent.

 

During the 1950s Kelly was deeply troubled by NPS management acceding to demands of the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission that Capitol Reef National Monument be opened to uranium prospecting. He felt that the decision had been a mistake and destructive of the long-term national interest. It turned out that there was not enough ore in the monument to be worth mining.

 

In 1958 Kelly got additional permanent help in protecting the monument and enforcing regulations; Park Ranger Grant Clark transferred from Zion. The year Clark arrived, fifty-six thousand visitors came to the park, and Charlie Kelly retired for the last time.

 

During the 1960s (under the program name Mission 66), NPS areas nationwide received new facilities to meet the demand of mushrooming park visitation. At Capitol Reef, a 53-site campground at Fruita, staff rental housing, and a new visitor center were built, the latter opening in 1966.

 

Visitation climbed dramatically after the paved, all-weather State Route 24 was built in 1962 through the Fremont River canyon near Fruita. State Route 24 replaced the narrow Capitol Gorge wagon road about 10 mi (16 km) to the south that frequently washed out. The old road has since been open only to foot traffic. In 1967, 146,598 persons visited the park. The staff was also growing.

 

During the 1960s, the NPS purchased private land parcels at Fruita and Pleasant Creek. Almost all private property passed into public ownership on a "willing buyer-willing seller" basis.

 

Preservationists convinced President Lyndon B. Johnson to set aside an enormous area of public lands in 1968, just before he left office. In Presidential Proclamation 3888 an additional 215,056 acres (87,030 ha) were placed under NPS control. By 1970, Capitol Reef National Monument comprised 254,251 acres (102,892 ha) and sprawled southeast from Thousand Lake Mountain almost to the Colorado River. The action was controversial locally, and NPS staffing at the monument was inadequate to properly manage the additional land.

 

The vast enlargement of the monument and diversification of the scenic resources soon raised another issue: whether Capitol Reef should be a national park, rather than a monument. Two bills were introduced into the United States Congress.

 

A House bill (H.R. 17152) introduced by Utah Congressman Laurence J. Burton called for a 180,000-acre (72,800 ha) national park and an adjunct 48,000-acre (19,400 ha) national recreation area where multiple use (including grazing) could continue indefinitely. In the United States Senate, meanwhile, Senate bill S. 531 had already passed on July 1, 1970, and provided for a 230,000-acre (93,100 ha) national park alone. The bill called for a 25-year phase-out of grazing.

 

In September 1970, United States Department of Interior officials told a house subcommittee session that they preferred about 254,000 acres (103,000 ha) be set aside as a national park. They also recommended that the grazing phase-out period be 10 years, rather than 25. They did not favor the adjunct recreation area.

 

It was not until late 1971 that Congressional action was completed. By then, the 92nd United States Congress was in session and S. 531 had languished. A new bill, S. 29, was introduced in the Senate by Senator Frank E. Moss of Utah and was essentially the same as the defunct S. 531 except that it called for an additional 10,834 acres (4,384 ha) of public lands for a Capitol Reef National Park. In the House, Utah Representative K. Gunn McKay (with Representative Lloyd) had introduced H.R. 9053 to replace the dead H.R. 17152. This time, the House bill dropped the concept of an adjunct Capitol Reef National Recreation Area and adopted the Senate concept of a 25-year limit on continued grazing. The Department of Interior was still recommending a national park of 254,368 acres (102,939 ha) and a 10-year limit for grazing phase-out.

 

S. 29 passed the Senate in June and was sent to the House, which dropped its own bill and passed the Senate version with an amendment. Because the Senate was not in agreement with the House amendment, differences were worked out in Conference Committee. The Conference Committee issued its report on November 30, 1971, and the bill passed both houses of Congress. The legislation—'An Act to Establish The Capitol Reef National Park in the State of Utah'—became Public Law 92-207 when it was signed by President Richard Nixon on December 18, 1971.

 

The area including the park was once the edge of a shallow sea that invaded the land in the Permian, creating the Cutler Formation. Only the sandstone of the youngest member of the Cutler Formation, the White Rim, is exposed in the park. The deepening sea left carbonate deposits, forming the limestone of the Kaibab Limestone, the same formation that rims the Grand Canyon to the southwest.

 

During the Triassic, streams deposited reddish-brown silt that later became the siltstone of the Moenkopi Formation. Uplift and erosion followed. Conglomerate, followed by logs, sand, mud, and wind-transported volcanic ash, then formed the uranium-containing Chinle Formation.

 

The members of the Glen Canyon Group were all laid down in the middle- to late-Triassic during a time of increasing aridity. They include:

 

Wingate Sandstone: sand dunes on the shore of an ancient sea

Kayenta Formation: thin-bedded layers of sand deposited by slow-moving streams in channels and across low plains

Navajo Sandstone: huge fossilized sand dunes from a massive Sahara-like desert.

 

The Golden Throne. Though Capitol Reef is famous for white domes of Navajo Sandstone, this dome's color is a result of a lingering section of yellow Carmel Formation carbonate, which has stained the underlying rock.

The San Rafael Group consists of four Jurassic-period formations, from oldest to youngest:

 

Carmel Formation: gypsum, sand, and limey silt laid down in what may have been a graben that was periodically flooded by sea water

Entrada Sandstone: sandstone from barrier islands/sand bars in a near-shore environment

Curtis Formation: made from conglomerate, sandstone, and shale

Summerville Formation: reddish-brown mud and white sand deposited in tidal flats.

Streams once again laid down mud and sand in their channels, on lakebeds, and in swampy plains, creating the Morrison Formation. Early in the Cretaceous, similar nonmarine sediments were laid down and became the Dakota Sandstone. Eventually, the Cretaceous Seaway covered the Dakota, depositing the Mancos Shale.

 

Only small remnants of the Mesaverde Group are found, capping a few mesas in the park's eastern section.

 

Near the end of the Cretaceous period, a mountain-building event called the Laramide orogeny started to compact and uplift the region, forming the Rocky Mountains and creating monoclines such as the Waterpocket Fold in the park. Ten to fifteen million years ago, the entire region was uplifted much further by the creation of the Colorado Plateau. This uplift was very even. Igneous activity in the form of volcanism and dike and sill intrusion also occurred during this time.

 

The drainage system in the area was rearranged and steepened, causing streams to downcut faster and sometimes change course. Wetter times during the ice ages of the Pleistocene increased the rate of erosion.

 

There are more than 840 species of plants that are found in the park and over 40 of those species are classified as rare and endemic.

 

The closest town to Capitol Reef is Torrey, about 11 mi (18 km) west of the visitor center on Highway 24, slightly west of its intersection with Highway 12. Its 2020 population is less than 300. Torrey has a few motels and restaurants and functions as a gateway town to Capitol Reef National Park. Highway 12, as well as a partially unpaved scenic backway named the Burr Trail, provide access from the west through the Grand Staircase–Escalante National Monument and the town of Boulder.

 

A variety of activities are available to tourists, both ranger-led and self-guided, including auto touring, hiking, backpacking, camping, bicycling (on paved and unpaved roads only; no trails), horseback riding, canyoneering, and rock climbing. The orchards planted by Mormon pioneers are maintained by the National Park Service. From early March to mid-October, various fruit—cherries, apricots, peaches, pears, or apples—can be harvested by visitors for a fee.

 

A hiking trail guide is available at the visitor center for both day hikes and backcountry hiking. Backcountry access requires a free permit.

 

Numerous trails are available for hiking and backpacking in the park, with fifteen in the Fruita District alone. The following trails are some of the most popular in the park:

 

Cassidy Arch Trail: a very steep, strenuous 3.5 mi (5.6 km) round trip that leads into the Grand Wash to an overlook of the Cassidy Arch.

Hickman Bridge Trail: a 2 mi (3.2 km) round trip leading to the natural bridge.

Frying Pan Trail: an 8.8 mi (14.2 km) round trip that passes the Cassidy Arch, Grand Wash, and Cohab Canyon.

Brimhall Natural Bridge: a popular, though strenuous, 4.5 mi (7.2 km) round trip with views of Brimhall Canyon, the Waterpocket Fold, and Brimhall Natural Bridge.

Halls Creek Narrows: 22 mi (35 km) long and considered strenuous, with many side canyons and creeks; typically hiked as a 2-3 day camping trip.

 

Visitors may explore several of the main areas of the park by private vehicle:

 

Scenic Drive: winds through the middle of the park, passing the major points of interest; the road is accessible from the visitor center to approximately 2 mi (3.2 km) into the Capitol Gorge.

Notom-Bullfrog Road: traverses the eastern side of the Waterpocket Fold, along 10 mi (16 km) of paved road, with the remainder unpaved.

Cathedral Road: an unpaved road through the northern areas of the park, that traverses Cathedral Valley, passing the Temples of the Sun and Moon.

 

The primary camping location is the Fruita campground, with 71 campsites (no water, electrical, or sewer hookups), and restrooms without bathing facilities. The campground also has group sites with picnic areas and restrooms. Two primitive free camping areas are also available.

 

Canyoneering is growing in popularity in the park. It is a recreational sport that takes one through slot canyons. It involves rappelling and may require swimming and other technical rope work. Day-pass permits are required for canyoneering in the park, and can be obtained for free from the visitor's center or through email. It's key to know that each route requires its own permit. If one is planning on canyoneering for multiple days, passes are required for each day. Overnight camping as part of the canyoneering trip is permitted, but one must request a free backcountry pass from the visitor center.

 

It is imperative to plan canyoneering trips around the weather. The Colorado Plateau is susceptible to flash flooding during prime rainy months. Because canyoneering takes place through slot canyons, getting caught in a flash flood could be lethal. Take care to consult reliable weather sources. The Weather Atlas shows charts with the monthly average rainfall in inches.

 

Another risk to be aware of during the summer months is extreme heat. Visitors can find weather warnings on the National Weather Service website. The heat levels are detailed by a color and numerical scale (0-4).

 

One of the most popular canyoneering routes in Capitol Reef National Park is Cassidy Arch Canyon. A paper by George Huddart, details the park's commitment to working with citizens to maintain the route as well as the vegetation and rocks. The canyon route is approximately 2.3 miles long (0.4 miles of technical work), consisting of 8 different rappels, and takes between 2.5 and 4.5 hours to complete. The first rappel is 140 ft and descends below the famous Cassidy Arch.

 

Utah is a landlocked state in the Mountain West subregion of the Western United States. It borders Colorado to its east, Wyoming to its northeast, Idaho to its north, Arizona to its south, and Nevada to its west. Utah also touches a corner of New Mexico in the southeast. Of the fifty U.S. states, Utah is the 13th-largest by area; with a population over three million, it is the 30th-most-populous and 11th-least-densely populated. Urban development is mostly concentrated in two areas: the Wasatch Front in the north-central part of the state, which is home to roughly two-thirds of the population and includes the capital city, Salt Lake City; and Washington County in the southwest, with more than 180,000 residents. Most of the western half of Utah lies in the Great Basin.

 

Utah has been inhabited for thousands of years by various indigenous groups such as the ancient Puebloans, Navajo, and Ute. The Spanish were the first Europeans to arrive in the mid-16th century, though the region's difficult geography and harsh climate made it a peripheral part of New Spain and later Mexico. Even while it was Mexican territory, many of Utah's earliest settlers were American, particularly Mormons fleeing marginalization and persecution from the United States via the Mormon Trail. Following the Mexican–American War in 1848, the region was annexed by the U.S., becoming part of the Utah Territory, which included what is now Colorado and Nevada. Disputes between the dominant Mormon community and the federal government delayed Utah's admission as a state; only after the outlawing of polygamy was it admitted in 1896 as the 45th.

 

People from Utah are known as Utahns. Slightly over half of all Utahns are Mormons, the vast majority of whom are members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church), which has its world headquarters in Salt Lake City; Utah is the only state where a majority of the population belongs to a single church. A 2023 paper challenged this perception (claiming only 42% of Utahns are Mormons) however most statistics still show a majority of Utah residents belong to the LDS church; estimates from the LDS church suggests 60.68% of Utah's population belongs to the church whilst some sources put the number as high as 68%. The paper replied that membership count done by the LDS Church is too high for several reasons. The LDS Church greatly influences Utahn culture, politics, and daily life, though since the 1990s the state has become more religiously diverse as well as secular.

 

Utah has a highly diversified economy, with major sectors including transportation, education, information technology and research, government services, mining, multi-level marketing, and tourism. Utah has been one of the fastest growing states since 2000, with the 2020 U.S. census confirming the fastest population growth in the nation since 2010. St. George was the fastest-growing metropolitan area in the United States from 2000 to 2005. Utah ranks among the overall best states in metrics such as healthcare, governance, education, and infrastructure. It has the 12th-highest median average income and the least income inequality of any U.S. state. Over time and influenced by climate change, droughts in Utah have been increasing in frequency and severity, putting a further strain on Utah's water security and impacting the state's economy.

 

The History of Utah is an examination of the human history and social activity within the state of Utah located in the western United States.

 

Archaeological evidence dates the earliest habitation of humans in Utah to about 10,000 to 12,000 years ago. Paleolithic people lived near the Great Basin's swamps and marshes, which had an abundance of fish, birds, and small game animals. Big game, including bison, mammoths and ground sloths, also were attracted to these water sources. Over the centuries, the mega-fauna died, this population was replaced by the Desert Archaic people, who sheltered in caves near the Great Salt Lake. Relying more on gathering than the previous Utah residents, their diet was mainly composed of cattails and other salt tolerant plants such as pickleweed, burro weed and sedge. Red meat appears to have been more of a luxury, although these people used nets and the atlatl to hunt water fowl, ducks, small animals and antelope. Artifacts include nets woven with plant fibers and rabbit skin, woven sandals, gaming sticks, and animal figures made from split-twigs. About 3,500 years ago, lake levels rose and the population of Desert Archaic people appears to have dramatically decreased. The Great Basin may have been almost unoccupied for 1,000 years.

 

The Fremont culture, named from sites near the Fremont River in Utah, lived in what is now north and western Utah and parts of Nevada, Idaho and Colorado from approximately 600 to 1300 AD. These people lived in areas close to water sources that had been previously occupied by the Desert Archaic people, and may have had some relationship with them. However, their use of new technologies define them as a distinct people. Fremont technologies include:

 

use of the bow and arrow while hunting,

building pithouse shelters,

growing maize and probably beans and squash,

building above ground granaries of adobe or stone,

creating and decorating low-fired pottery ware,

producing art, including jewelry and rock art such as petroglyphs and pictographs.

 

The ancient Puebloan culture, also known as the Anasazi, occupied territory adjacent to the Fremont. The ancestral Puebloan culture centered on the present-day Four Corners area of the Southwest United States, including the San Juan River region of Utah. Archaeologists debate when this distinct culture emerged, but cultural development seems to date from about the common era, about 500 years before the Fremont appeared. It is generally accepted that the cultural peak of these people was around the 1200 CE. Ancient Puebloan culture is known for well constructed pithouses and more elaborate adobe and masonry dwellings. They were excellent craftsmen, producing turquoise jewelry and fine pottery. The Puebloan culture was based on agriculture, and the people created and cultivated fields of maize, beans, and squash and domesticated turkeys. They designed and produced elaborate field terracing and irrigation systems. They also built structures, some known as kivas, apparently designed solely for cultural and religious rituals.

 

These two later cultures were roughly contemporaneous, and appear to have established trading relationships. They also shared enough cultural traits that archaeologists believe the cultures may have common roots in the early American Southwest. However, each remained culturally distinct throughout most of their existence. These two well established cultures appear to have been severely impacted by climatic change and perhaps by the incursion of new people in about 1200 CE. Over the next two centuries, the Fremont and ancient Pueblo people may have moved into the American southwest, finding new homes and farmlands in the river drainages of Arizona, New Mexico and northern Mexico.

 

In about 1200, Shoshonean speaking peoples entered Utah territory from the west. They may have originated in southern California and moved into the desert environment due to population pressure along the coast. They were an upland people with a hunting and gathering lifestyle utilizing roots and seeds, including the pinyon nut. They were also skillful fishermen, created pottery and raised some crops. When they first arrived in Utah, they lived as small family groups with little tribal organization. Four main Shoshonean peoples inhabited Utah country. The Shoshone in the north and northeast, the Gosiutes in the northwest, the Utes in the central and eastern parts of the region and the Southern Paiutes in the southwest. Initially, there seems to have been very little conflict between these groups.

 

In the early 16th century, the San Juan River basin in Utah's southeast also saw a new people, the Díne or Navajo, part of a greater group of plains Athabaskan speakers moved into the Southwest from the Great Plains. In addition to the Navajo, this language group contained people that were later known as Apaches, including the Lipan, Jicarilla, and Mescalero Apaches.

 

Athabaskans were a hunting people who initially followed the bison, and were identified in 16th-century Spanish accounts as "dog nomads". The Athabaskans expanded their range throughout the 17th century, occupying areas the Pueblo peoples had abandoned during prior centuries. The Spanish first specifically mention the "Apachu de Nabajo" (Navaho) in the 1620s, referring to the people in the Chama valley region east of the San Juan River, and north west of Santa Fe. By the 1640s, the term Navaho was applied to these same people. Although the Navajo newcomers established a generally peaceful trading and cultural exchange with the some modern Pueblo peoples to the south, they experienced intermittent warfare with the Shoshonean peoples, particularly the Utes in eastern Utah and western Colorado.

 

At the time of European expansion, beginning with Spanish explorers traveling from Mexico, five distinct native peoples occupied territory within the Utah area: the Northern Shoshone, the Goshute, the Ute, the Paiute and the Navajo.

 

The Spanish explorer Francisco Vázquez de Coronado may have crossed into what is now southern Utah in 1540, when he was seeking the legendary Cíbola.

 

A group led by two Spanish Catholic priests—sometimes called the Domínguez–Escalante expedition—left Santa Fe in 1776, hoping to find a route to the California coast. The expedition traveled as far north as Utah Lake and encountered the native residents. All of what is now Utah was claimed by the Spanish Empire from the 1500s to 1821 as part of New Spain (later as the province Alta California); and subsequently claimed by Mexico from 1821 to 1848. However, Spain and Mexico had little permanent presence in, or control of, the region.

 

Fur trappers (also known as mountain men) including Jim Bridger, explored some regions of Utah in the early 19th century. The city of Provo was named for one such man, Étienne Provost, who visited the area in 1825. The city of Ogden, Utah is named for a brigade leader of the Hudson's Bay Company, Peter Skene Ogden who trapped in the Weber Valley. In 1846, a year before the arrival of members from the Church of Jesus Christ of latter-day Saints, the ill-fated Donner Party crossed through the Salt Lake valley late in the season, deciding not to stay the winter there but to continue forward to California, and beyond.

 

Members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, commonly known as Mormon pioneers, first came to the Salt Lake Valley on July 24, 1847. At the time, the U.S. had already captured the Mexican territories of Alta California and New Mexico in the Mexican–American War and planned to keep them, but those territories, including the future state of Utah, officially became United States territory upon the signing of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, February 2, 1848. The treaty was ratified by the United States Senate on March 10, 1848.

 

Upon arrival in the Salt Lake Valley, the Mormon pioneers found no permanent settlement of Indians. Other areas along the Wasatch Range were occupied at the time of settlement by the Northwestern Shoshone and adjacent areas by other bands of Shoshone such as the Gosiute. The Northwestern Shoshone lived in the valleys on the eastern shore of Great Salt Lake and in adjacent mountain valleys. Some years after arriving in the Salt Lake Valley Mormons, who went on to colonize many other areas of what is now Utah, were petitioned by Indians for recompense for land taken. The response of Heber C. Kimball, first counselor to Brigham Young, was that the land belonged to "our Father in Heaven and we expect to plow and plant it." A 1945 Supreme Court decision found that the land had been treated by the United States as public domain; no aboriginal title by the Northwestern Shoshone had been recognized by the United States or extinguished by treaty with the United States.

 

Upon arriving in the Salt Lake Valley, the Mormons had to make a place to live. They created irrigation systems, laid out farms, built houses, churches, and schools. Access to water was crucially important. Almost immediately, Brigham Young set out to identify and claim additional community sites. While it was difficult to find large areas in the Great Basin where water sources were dependable and growing seasons long enough to raise vitally important subsistence crops, satellite communities began to be formed.

 

Shortly after the first company arrived in the Salt Lake Valley in 1847, the community of Bountiful was settled to the north. In 1848, settlers moved into lands purchased from trapper Miles Goodyear in present-day Ogden. In 1849, Tooele and Provo were founded. Also that year, at the invitation of Ute chief Wakara, settlers moved into the Sanpete Valley in central Utah to establish the community of Manti. Fillmore, Utah, intended to be the capital of the new territory, was established in 1851. In 1855, missionary efforts aimed at western native cultures led to outposts in Fort Lemhi, Idaho, Las Vegas, Nevada and Elk Mountain in east-central Utah.

 

The experiences of returning members of the Mormon Battalion were also important in establishing new communities. On their journey west, the Mormon soldiers had identified dependable rivers and fertile river valleys in Colorado, Arizona and southern California. In addition, as the men traveled to rejoin their families in the Salt Lake Valley, they moved through southern Nevada and the eastern segments of southern Utah. Jefferson Hunt, a senior Mormon officer of the Battalion, actively searched for settlement sites, minerals, and other resources. His report encouraged 1851 settlement efforts in Iron County, near present-day Cedar City. These southern explorations eventually led to Mormon settlements in St. George, Utah, Las Vegas and San Bernardino, California, as well as communities in southern Arizona.

 

Prior to establishment of the Oregon and California trails and Mormon settlement, Indians native to the Salt Lake Valley and adjacent areas lived by hunting buffalo and other game, but also gathered grass seed from the bountiful grass of the area as well as roots such as those of the Indian Camas. By the time of settlement, indeed before 1840, the buffalo were gone from the valley, but hunting by settlers and grazing of cattle severely impacted the Indians in the area, and as settlement expanded into nearby river valleys and oases, indigenous tribes experienced increasing difficulty in gathering sufficient food. Brigham Young's counsel was to feed the hungry tribes, and that was done, but it was often not enough. These tensions formed the background to the Bear River massacre committed by California Militia stationed in Salt Lake City during the Civil War. The site of the massacre is just inside Preston, Idaho, but was generally thought to be within Utah at the time.

 

Statehood was petitioned for in 1849-50 using the name Deseret. The proposed State of Deseret would have been quite large, encompassing all of what is now Utah, and portions of Colorado, Idaho, Nevada, Wyoming, Arizona, Oregon, New Mexico and California. The name of Deseret was favored by the LDS leader Brigham Young as a symbol of industry and was derived from a reference in the Book of Mormon. The petition was rejected by Congress and Utah did not become a state until 1896, following the Utah Constitutional Convention of 1895.

 

In 1850, the Utah Territory was created with the Compromise of 1850, and Fillmore (named after President Fillmore) was designated the capital. In 1856, Salt Lake City replaced Fillmore as the territorial capital.

 

The first group of pioneers brought African slaves with them, making Utah the only place in the western United States to have African slavery. Three slaves, Green Flake, Hark Lay, and Oscar Crosby, came west with this first group in 1847. The settlers also began to purchase Indian slaves in the well-established Indian slave trade, as well as enslaving Indian prisoners of war. In 1850, 26 slaves were counted in Salt Lake County. Slavery didn't become officially recognized until 1852, when the Act in Relation to Service and the Act for the relief of Indian Slaves and Prisoners were passed. Slavery was repealed on June 19, 1862, when Congress prohibited slavery in all US territories.

 

Disputes between the Mormon inhabitants and the federal government intensified after the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints' practice of polygamy became known. The polygamous practices of the Mormons, which were made public in 1854, would be one of the major reasons Utah was denied statehood until almost 50 years after the Mormons had entered the area.

 

After news of their polygamous practices spread, the members of the LDS Church were quickly viewed by some as un-American and rebellious. In 1857, after news of a possible rebellion spread, President James Buchanan sent troops on the Utah expedition to quell the growing unrest and to replace Brigham Young as territorial governor with Alfred Cumming. The expedition was also known as the Utah War.

 

As fear of invasion grew, Mormon settlers had convinced some Paiute Indians to aid in a Mormon-led attack on 120 immigrants from Arkansas under the guise of Indian aggression. The murder of these settlers became known as the Mountain Meadows massacre. The Mormon leadership had adopted a defensive posture that led to a ban on the selling of grain to outsiders in preparation for an impending war. This chafed pioneers traveling through the region, who were unable to purchase badly needed supplies. A disagreement between some of the Arkansas pioneers and the Mormons in Cedar City led to the secret planning of the massacre by a few Mormon leaders in the area. Some scholars debate the involvement of Brigham Young. Only one man, John D. Lee, was ever convicted of the murders, and he was executed at the massacre site.

 

Express riders had brought the news 1,000 miles from the Missouri River settlements to Salt Lake City within about two weeks of the army's beginning to march west. Fearing the worst as 2,500 troops (roughly 1/3rd of the army then) led by General Albert Sidney Johnston started west, Brigham Young ordered all residents of Salt Lake City and neighboring communities to prepare their homes for burning and evacuate southward to Utah Valley and southern Utah. Young also sent out a few units of the Nauvoo Legion (numbering roughly 8,000–10,000), to delay the army's advance. The majority he sent into the mountains to prepare defenses or south to prepare for a scorched earth retreat. Although some army wagon supply trains were captured and burned and herds of army horses and cattle run off no serious fighting occurred. Starting late and short on supplies, the United States Army camped during the bitter winter of 1857–58 near a burned out Fort Bridger in Wyoming. Through the negotiations between emissary Thomas L. Kane, Young, Cumming and Johnston, control of Utah territory was peacefully transferred to Cumming, who entered an eerily vacant Salt Lake City in the spring of 1858. By agreement with Young, Johnston established the army at Fort Floyd 40 miles away from Salt Lake City, to the southwest.

 

Salt Lake City was the last link of the First Transcontinental Telegraph, between Carson City, Nevada and Omaha, Nebraska completed in October 1861. Brigham Young, who had helped expedite construction, was among the first to send a message, along with Abraham Lincoln and other officials. Soon after the telegraph line was completed, the Deseret Telegraph Company built the Deseret line connecting the settlements in the territory with Salt Lake City and, by extension, the rest of the United States.

 

Because of the American Civil War, federal troops were pulled out of Utah Territory (and their fort auctioned off), leaving the territorial government in federal hands without army backing until General Patrick E. Connor arrived with the 3rd Regiment of California Volunteers in 1862. While in Utah, Connor and his troops soon became discontent with this assignment wanting to head to Virginia where the "real" fighting and glory was occurring. Connor established Fort Douglas just three miles (5 km) east of Salt Lake City and encouraged his bored and often idle soldiers to go out and explore for mineral deposits to bring more non-Mormons into the state. Minerals were discovered in Tooele County, and some miners began to come to the territory. Conner also solved the Shoshone Indian problem in Cache Valley Utah by luring the Shoshone into a midwinter confrontation on January 29, 1863. The armed conflict quickly turned into a rout, discipline among the soldiers broke down, and the Battle of Bear River is today usually referred to by historians as the Bear River Massacre. Between 200 and 400 Shoshone men, women and children were killed, as were 27 soldiers, with over 50 more soldiers wounded or suffering from frostbite.

 

Beginning in 1865, Utah's Black Hawk War developed into the deadliest conflict in the territory's history. Chief Antonga Black Hawk died in 1870, but fights continued to break out until additional federal troops were sent in to suppress the Ghost Dance of 1872. The war is unique among Indian Wars because it was a three-way conflict, with mounted Timpanogos Utes led by Antonga Black Hawk fighting federal and Utah local militia.

 

On May 10, 1869, the First transcontinental railroad was completed at Promontory Summit, north of the Great Salt Lake. The railroad brought increasing numbers of people into the state, and several influential businessmen made fortunes in the territory.

 

Main article: Latter Day Saint polygamy in the late-19th century

During the 1870s and 1880s, federal laws were passed and federal marshals assigned to enforce the laws against polygamy. In the 1890 Manifesto, the LDS Church leadership dropped its approval of polygamy citing divine revelation. When Utah applied for statehood again in 1895, it was accepted. Statehood was officially granted on January 4, 1896.

 

The Mormon issue made the situation for women the topic of nationwide controversy. In 1870 the Utah Territory, controlled by Mormons, gave women the right to vote. However, in 1887, Congress disenfranchised Utah women with the Edmunds–Tucker Act. In 1867–96, eastern activists promoted women's suffrage in Utah as an experiment, and as a way to eliminate polygamy. They were Presbyterians and other Protestants convinced that Mormonism was a non-Christian cult that grossly mistreated women. The Mormons promoted woman suffrage to counter the negative image of downtrodden Mormon women. With the 1890 Manifesto clearing the way for statehood, in 1895 Utah adopted a constitution restoring the right of women's suffrage. Congress admitted Utah as a state with that constitution in 1896.

 

Though less numerous than other intermountain states at the time, several lynching murders for alleged misdeeds occurred in Utah territory at the hand of vigilantes. Those documented include the following, with their ethnicity or national origin noted in parentheses if it was provided in the source:

 

William Torrington in Carson City (then a part of Utah territory), 1859

Thomas Coleman (Black man) in Salt Lake City, 1866

3 unidentified men at Wahsatch, winter of 1868

A Black man in Uintah, 1869

Charles A. Benson in Logan, 1873

Ah Sing (Chinese man) in Corinne, 1874

Thomas Forrest in St. George, 1880

William Harvey (Black man) in Salt Lake City, 1883

John Murphy in Park City, 1883

George Segal (Japanese man) in Ogden, 1884

Joseph Fisher in Eureka, 1886

Robert Marshall (Black man) in Castle Gate, 1925

Other lynchings in Utah territory include multiple instances of mass murder of Native American children, women, and men by White settlers including the Battle Creek massacre (1849), Provo River Massacre (1850), Nephi massacre (1853), and Circleville Massacre (1866).

 

Beginning in the early 20th century, with the establishment of such national parks as Bryce Canyon National Park and Zion National Park, Utah began to become known for its natural beauty. Southern Utah became a popular filming spot for arid, rugged scenes, and such natural landmarks as Delicate Arch and "the Mittens" of Monument Valley are instantly recognizable to most national residents. During the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s, with the construction of the Interstate highway system, accessibility to the southern scenic areas was made easier.

 

Beginning in 1939, with the establishment of Alta Ski Area, Utah has become world-renowned for its skiing. The dry, powdery snow of the Wasatch Range is considered some of the best skiing in the world. Salt Lake City won the bid for the 2002 Winter Olympics in 1995, and this has served as a great boost to the economy. The ski resorts have increased in popularity, and many of the Olympic venues scattered across the Wasatch Front continue to be used for sporting events. This also spurred the development of the light-rail system in the Salt Lake Valley, known as TRAX, and the re-construction of the freeway system around the city.

 

During the late 20th century, the state grew quickly. In the 1970s, growth was phenomenal in the suburbs. Sandy was one of the fastest-growing cities in the country at that time, and West Valley City is the state's 2nd most populous city. Today, many areas of Utah are seeing phenomenal growth. Northern Davis, southern and western Salt Lake, Summit, eastern Tooele, Utah, Wasatch, and Washington counties are all growing very quickly. Transportation and urbanization are major issues in politics as development consumes agricultural land and wilderness areas.

 

In 2012, the State of Utah passed the Utah Transfer of Public Lands Act in an attempt to gain control over a substantial portion of federal land in the state from the federal government, based on language in the Utah Enabling Act of 1894. The State does not intend to use force or assert control by limiting access in an attempt to control the disputed lands, but does intend to use a multi-step process of education, negotiation, legislation, and if necessary, litigation as part of its multi-year effort to gain state or private control over the lands after 2014.

 

Utah families, like most Americans everywhere, did their utmost to assist in the war effort. Tires, meat, butter, sugar, fats, oils, coffee, shoes, boots, gasoline, canned fruits, vegetables, and soups were rationed on a national basis. The school day was shortened and bus routes were reduced to limit the number of resources used stateside and increase what could be sent to soldiers.

 

Geneva Steel was built to increase the steel production for America during World War II. President Franklin D. Roosevelt had proposed opening a steel mill in Utah in 1936, but the idea was shelved after a couple of months. After the attack on Pearl Harbor, the United States entered the war and the steel plant was put into progress. In April 1944, Geneva shipped its first order, which consisted of over 600 tons of steel plate. Geneva Steel also brought thousands of job opportunities to Utah. The positions were hard to fill as many of Utah's men were overseas fighting. Women began working, filling 25 percent of the jobs.

 

As a result of Utah's and Geneva Steels contribution during the war, several Liberty Ships were named in honor of Utah including the USS Joseph Smith, USS Brigham Young, USS Provo, and the USS Peter Skene Ogden.

 

One of the sectors of the beachhead of Normandy Landings was codenamed Utah Beach, and the amphibious landings at the beach were undertaken by United States Army troops.

 

It is estimated that 1,450 soldiers from Utah were killed in the war.

Few foxes make four years old. I found this one year old vixen dead just weeks after I had photographed her on waste land near me. A close inspection of her made me conclude that her death was down to natural causes. Given the lack of substantial food source, being out competed for it and stress created by the attention from the dominant neighbouring dog fox, I can only presume an underlying illness proved too much for her. I heavily invest in my wildlife, particularly foxes, and I carried her death with me all day long. Equally sad is the loss of two small local refuges for these animals to "executive" housing in the past fortnight. As a fox crossed my garden ten minutes back, I wondered on what sort of future these and most other wildlife have under our stewardship.

Average seeing, bad transparency due to high cloud cover. CFF160 refractor, ASI290MM.

Average 3 inches tall diecast figures from the Star Wars universe by Takara Tomy in 2015. First wave consists of #01 Darth Vader, #02 Stormtrooper, #03 R2-D2 and #04 C-3PO. Although small in size they are pleasantly weighty and nice to play with.

Indianapolis, IN | Average Joe's Sports Pub

 

Day Fourteen -

 

Productive day today, fun night tonight. I met up with an old friend at a local bar to shoot a few games of pool, drink a beer or two, and just to catch up. Good day all around.

Badbury Clump, near Faringdon, Oxfordshire.

 

HINGEFINKLE'S LOGBOOK (Seventh Instalment)

 

The Amazing Advent of Atropa and Amanita

 

“Oh fiddlesticks!” I said. “Now we are in a pretty pickle. Any suggestions, Agrimony?”

“Not really,” replied Agrimony grimly. “I suppose we could run for it, but I’ve a suspicion we’re surrounded. Besides, quite frankly, I can’t be bothered.”

I turned back towards Spitmucus astride his fire dragon. I should make clear, I suppose, that while Draco diminutivus obnoxiosious is, as its name suggests, only a pygmy fire dragon, it is still roughly five times the size of the average cart-horse, with talons big enough to disembowel an elephant, purplish scales the size of dinner-plates, and rather hypnotic rose-pink eyes. Like all fire dragons (and, as I have told Agrimony a thousand times, like all birds, too), it walks on its hind legs, the front legs being in this species almost vestigial, having a very limited manipulative capacity. Fire dragons are, of course, the only creatures of the genus Draco to possess the unique pectoral girdle which accommodates not only the forelegs, but also a pair of membranous wings. The specimen in question was undoubtedly a monarch among pygmy fire dragons, and as he stretched his wings and yawned a spurt of flame two ells long, almost dislodging his rider, I was reminded how much I coveted the skeletal remains of Draco diminutivus obnoxiosious. However, under the current circumstances, I considered it impertinent to enquire whether he might consider donating his body to science.

 

Besides, the fellow lodged between his shoulder blades was also a specimen of peculiar interest. You must remember that I had only seen Griswald and Snotgobbler in their full Goblinish glory for the space of a few seconds, before Agrimony turned them into sheep in a fit of impatience. Faced with so splendid a dragon, however, Agrimony seemed less disposed to take offensive action, so that I was able to get a good look at Spitmucus as he prepared to address his captive audience. Being a military sort, and apparently one who had spent some time in the cavalry, Spitmucus wore knee-length riding boots, a pair of white military jodhpurs, and a red jacket festooned with gold braid and medals. But there were holes in the ends of his boots, out of which there protruded a disconcerting array of gnarled, green toes, with hooked claws where the toenails ought to have been. And as the pygmy dragon shifted his weight impatiently from foot to foot, and leaned against the half-ruined wall, sighing smokily to himself, I perceived that there was a wide tear in the back of Spitmucus’s jacket, out of which there protruded a hairy green back with rather prominent vertebral processes. His face was particularly unpleasant, so I tried not to look at it, especially after he cleared his throat and let the slime dribble down his chin.

 

“Oh, do hurry up and get on with it, Pukeslime, or whatever your name is,” said the dragon impatiently, giving Spitmucus the kind of look that a cat might be expected to give to a flea. “If you’re going to say something, say it, and let me get on with my part of the job.” And then, I am proud to say, he looked at me, groaned audibly, and said, “Why did I have to be the one to carry this pompous old coot? It’s just my luck, I can tell you. On any other occasion, I’d smother him with chestnuts and have him gently toasted, if only for the pleasure of shutting him up.”

“Now don’t you get sassy with me Polygonatum,” snorted Spitmucus indignantly. “Leave the wetorical part of pwoceedings to the experts!”

“Hum,” I could not help interrupting, “What does he mean by wetorical?”

Polygonatum gave another exasperated groan. “He means rhetorical, but he has a speech impediment. Trust me to be landed with a rider who can’t tell his rs from his ws. Curséd, rotten luck!”

Spitmucus ignored this, and, assuming as imperious a posture as possible, he commenced his speech. “Wesistance is futile, you are completely suwwounded,” he began, and as if to confirm it, five other pygmy fire dragons stuck their heads in through the windows and hungrily eyed the occupants of the hall. “We must expwess our gwatitude, Llew Llaw Gyffes, for depwiving us, at one fell swoop, of the twoublesome Pwince Eugene. He weally was becoming wather superfluous. I begin to think that you may make a perfect Pwime-Minister in a puppet government. As for the west of you, I am under orders to fwow you all into pwison.” (Here the pygmy fire dragons exchanged exasperated glances, and Polygonatum drooled steam to think of the tasty meal going to waste.) “No doubt our illustwious leader Scabpicker will wish to qwestion you all, and mete out such punishment as tweachewous cwiminals deserve. But I wather suspect he will leave you to languish with the wats and mice for a while, before he gets awound to intewwogating you -”

“Oh cripes,” interrupted Polygonatum. “I’ve had a bellyful of this prattle. Let’s just eat up and go.”

“Stop gwumbling, you widiculous dwagon,” replied Spitmucus. “I intend to welish my victorwy speech.”

“Yes,” said Polygonatum, “and I intend to relish a hominid or two before the day is out, starting with the most talkative ones.” He stared intently at me, and then craned his neck around and gave Spitmucus a similar look.

 

It is hardly necessary for me to relate the seemingly interminable argument which followed, in the course of which Spitmucus told Polygonatum repeatedly that he was incowwigible, and Polygonatum recited recipes for jacket-baked Goblin, roasted Bard and deep-fried Druid. Suffice it to say that Spitmucus fobbed Polygonatum off with some story about the people in Llanbrunchforth being fatter and juicier still, and we found ourselves being jostled into the village stables and clapped in irons. To our dismay, we found Gladys there too, looking decidedly shaken, with singed hair and deprived of all her beloved inventions, even her pocket-watch. The mayor sat grimly in one corner, and Agrimony slumped exhausted and defeated against the wall. The conditions were miserable; the rats ate better than we did, and the Goblin guards delighted in oscillating between enlightened civility and compassion on the one hand, and unbridled uncouthness and cruelty on the other. Indeed, it was not unusual for a Goblin guard to be seen commiserating with one prisoner about his sorry plight in the most understanding tones, whilst trampling on the head of another. I entertained a particular dislike for Squelchfart, a monstrous fellow with a snot-encrusted nose ring who delighted in “telling tales” about us to the other Goblin guards, so that they punished us for supposed crimes in a most arbitrary and gratuitous manner. And on Fridays, the only food was black pudding.

 

*

 

Oh, my dear little Alias, you will hardly believe me when I tell you that we remained in that horrible place for nine years. The Goblins were very good at keeping us just about alive, but our faces grew gaunt, our skin sagged, and our hair grew thin and grey. And for most of those nine years, we were kept in an agony of suspense, wondering when Scabpicker himself would deign to visit us, interrogate us, and pronounce his sentence upon us. And when he did come, we realised that nothing could possibly have prepared us for that skilful artifice, that calculated duplicity, that snide dissimulation.

 

Imagine, dear boy, an exquisite violin, made of the very finest seasoned woods in the most sophisticated gnomish workshop. The grain of the wood and the gracefulness of the curves enchant the eye; the touch of the strings fills the fingers with that sensitivity which is the breath and the vibrance of flawless music. You take up the bow; it nestles in your hand as though it had always been there. It possesses perfect balance and poise; a bow which can pronounce the most delicate of arpeggios, and draw out the sublimest of semi-quavers until music is no longer music but spirit transformed into sound, the movements of quicksilver made audible, the magnified tremblings of a butterfly’s wing. You draw the bow across the first string, and the sound resonates inside the instrument like the best wine maturing in the barrel, tuned to perfection. The sound is tranquility in motion, beyond all explanation, beyond all science. And the second string is like the first, and the third compounds the two; the wondrous conjunction of wood, air and a stretched string fills your heart with the purest of joys. You begin to play a tune, and it dances, ephemeral and tantalising, on the flux of time.

 

And then, in playing the tune, you must needs play the fourth string. It is flat; dreadfully flat. To hear it is the purest agony. Teeth on edge, you turn the screw to bring it into tune, but there is no change - the screw turns and turns and the string never tightens. You whip the bow away from the strings as if stung by an insect, but the fiddle continues to play, three strings tuned to a mellifluous harmony, and one string nothing but a cacophonous discord - discord, tearing at your heart like a pair of disembodied claws. Whenever that string is played, it makes the others sound grotesque - hideous parodies of themselves. Your instinct is to smash the violin to pieces, but you cannot, for it has the mastery of you, and you realise in an instant that you must listen to this abomination for the rest of your life.

 

That is what Scabpicker was like. I dare not tell you too much of his conversation with us - of how he spoke with such compassion and such plausible weeping about the awful deaths of so many of our friends and relations beneath the breath of Polygonatum and his brood, and how he then broke into paroxysms of hilarity because of the mournful expressions on our faces. I dare not tell you of the ways he manipulated us until we were ready to tear one-another’s throats out, or of the sincere and tender-hearted tones in which he read out the death sentence for each one of us. I dare not tell you - for although Scabpicker is now dead, I can hear the screeching of that untunable string to this very day.

 

Oh, yes. Did I forget to tell you? Scabpicker is dead - most assuredly dead. Why, if he were still alive, I am sure we would still be in prison waiting for our sentences to be carried out. That was Scabpicker’s way.

 

But in point of fact, he died the very night he left our cells. We all felt it, when he died; it was as though the violin had suddenly been plunged under water: we could still hear it playing, but there was at last room in our minds for our own thoughts as well. The Goblin guards had kept Agrimony drugged and almost insensible for all of those nine years, but on the night that Scabpicker died, he awoke and was as lucid - and as rude - as ever. It was then that the ground began to shake, and a sulphurous, burning smell drifted through the cracks of the cell wall.

“Oh, capital!” said Agrimony sarcastically, looking at the village tinker, who was chained back-to-back with Gladys Sparkbright. “I should say that we’re out of the frying pan and into the -”

He never finished his sentence, for at that very moment, the roof was torn from above us, and we all gazed up at the serrated, silver scaled muzzle of the largest species of land animal in existence. The creature lurched above us, and fixed us with an eye filled with the purest malignancy. Fire licked about his lips, and as it did so, the head of Scabpicker dropped to the cell floor, the hair burnt away, the eyes sightless, the green skin taut and spattered with black, rancorous blood. The great beast hiccoughed, and a sheet of flame shot across where the ceiling used to be.

“Draco terribilis pyromanicus!” I cried in awe, aware, despite my fear, that this was the opportunity of a lifetime. Oddly enough, no one had ever managed to make a first-hand report of an encounter with Draco terribilis pyromanicus, and I aimed to be the first.

“Quite so,” said the dragon. “But I’m not so enamoured of these newfangled triple-barrelled Latin names. How would you like it if I called you Homo sapiens stultissimus? My name is Atropa, and I find it singularly appropriate.”

“Absolutely fascinating!” I whispered. “He seems much more intelligent than the Hydra.”

“Fascinating schmascinating,” grumbled Agrimony. “Why don’t you shut up, Hingefinkle? I have no desire to be turned into crackling to the accompaniment of a final recital of your usual pseudo-scientific claptrap.”

“That just shows how mentally deficient you humans really are,” snorted Atropa. “Crackling requires the presence of subcutaneous fat. But you lot are so scrawny that all of you put together would yield less crackling than the average house-mouse. Miserable fare indeed, after an entree of seventy Goblins, a hundred and fifty human slaves and six pygmy dragons. A pox on the lot of you.” To prove his point, he grabbed me by the ball and chain, dangled me upside down so that I had a wonderful view of his olfactory orifices, and pinched my skin between a clawed thumb and forefinger. Then, he gave such a snort of disgust that my chain melted clean through and I landed in a heap on top of Agrimony.

 

“Atropa? Atropa?” The voice came, I judged, from across the village square. It was unmistakably the voice of another fire-dragon, and from the tone of voice and the imperiousness of the demand, I deduced that this was Atropa’s mate.

“Oh, hamstrung halflings! It’s the wife! What does she want now?” grumbled Atropa, and then, louder, “I’m over here, dearest!”

“Well, what are you doing over there?” came the reply.

“Nothing of consequence,” said Atropa, disappearing from view.

“Did you find anything to eat?”

“Nothing particularly edible.” Atropa’s voice was receding rapidly into the distance.

“Well, come on then. I’m hungry,” came the reply, and after that, there was nothing but the whistling of the wind above our heads, and the soulless, hollow chattering of the teeth in Scabpicker’s disembodied head.

 

*

 

Over the horrible days that followed, Atropa and his paramour Amanita devoured the slowest part of the Goblin army (the faster part of it scattered this way and that, some, Spitmucus included, hiding beyond the Marches of the Elf-Lords; others fleeing east, where they no doubt drowned themselves in the ocean, preferring water to fire when compelled to make a choice). By the end of it, the streets were awash with Goblin blood, and the rivers ran rank and black for three weeks. But Atropa and Amanita were still not satisfied, and it was not until they had eaten all the inhabitants of Llanbrunchforth, Dinnerwy and Supperdarn (scrawny as they were after nine years of Goblin hegemony), that Amanita consented to return to her bower in the mountains beyond the Rancid Swamp. We watched the awesome spectacle of her return to hibernation from a hill near Gladys’s workshop, and then made our way back to rummage through her scattered belongings, salvaging whatever was not bent or broken beyond repair. And there, lying on a bench, was Gladys’s prototype of the humane mousetrap, with a mummified piece of cheese still hanging from the wire. The door was closed, but there was no sign of the mouse. Not that there would have been, of course, for Gladys’s explosives were remarkably powerful.

“Hum, Gladys,” I said when the inspiration hit me. “You know that mousetrap -”

 

My dear little Alias, I fear I have already overstepped the mark by subjecting so young a child as yourself to a description of what happened to Scabpicker. So don’t try to persuade me, for I am firmly resolved not to do it. Why, little Alias, your tender, innocent mind would be corrupted for life, were I to tell you what Agrimony said next.

 

SCFE FPT-22 w/ USSC 6325 & USSC 4204

Average temperature - New Year's Eve, World

Schweiz / Tessin - Verzascatal

 

The Valle Verzasca is a valley in the Locarno district of the canton of Ticino, Switzerland. It comprises the municipalities of Mergoscia, Vogorno, Corippo, Lavertezzo, Brione, Gerra, Frasco, and Sonogno. As of 2004, the total population is 3,200. It is the most central valley of Ticino, and none of the passes out of the valley cross cantonal or national borders. The valley is formed by the river Verzasca and is situated between the Leventina and the Maggia and culminates at Pizzo Barone.

 

Geography

 

Located between the Leventina and the Valle Maggia valleys, Valle Verzasca extends over a length of 25 kilometres (16 mi) in north–south direction and is situated in the north of the Lago Maggiore. The valley floor is at about 500 metres (1,640 ft) to 900 metres (2,953 ft) above sea level. The surrounding mountain passes respectively have an average altitude of 2,400 metres (7,874 ft). The valley is crossed by the Verzasca which is dammed at the southernly outlet of the valley, forming the Lago di Vogorno, before it flows in the Magadino plain in the vicinity of the Ticino in the Lago Maggiore.

 

The Valle Verzasca includes the geographical centre of Ticino, which is located at Mergoscia, near the lower end of the valley.

 

Climate

 

Due to the different altitudes, all climate zones are combined in the Valle Verzasca. Tenero-contra and Gordola include the insubric climate region thanks to the deep-sea level, close to the Lago Maggiore and protected by the mountains from the north winds. Vineyards and Mediterranean vegetation benefit from the mildest climate area of Switzerland, nebulae are rare and rainfall of short duration. With increasing altitude, the hills and mountain climate goes over to regions dominated by the Alpine climate (over 2,000 metres (6,562 ft)).

 

Flora and fauna

 

The diversity benefits among other things, the cultivation of vines, and it flourish chestnut forests and palm trees thrive. Due to differences in soil type and amounts, almost all flora occurring in the Ticino and fauna of the various environmental zones are found in the Verzasca Valley.

 

The Romans introduced and comparable to the tropical wood species, Castanea sativa is in the southern part of the valley, below 1,000 metres (3,281 ft), the dominant species. It is no longer actively cultivated, but favors the further diffusion, and studies suggest taking advantage of the valuable wood of chestnut as a valuable wood.

 

In the Valle Verzasca the endemic Nera Verzasca goat has been preserved, which looks very much like the ancient Roman goat. This medieval durable goat has short hair, because it's not stuck in the snow.

 

Culture

 

Due to its isolated location, the Verzasca Valley is claimed as one of the valleys that could best keep its originality. The secluded geographical location made it unattractive for conquerors since the Roman period, and even before. The first traces of settlement in the area are from the early 2nd millennium BC, in its southern part. In Berzona, a locality (frazione) of Vogorno, a carved rock known as a Sass di Striöi (literally: witches stone) is situated on a hiking trail. The shell rock most likely dates from around 600–700 BC; there are about 90 such carved rocks in the Verzasca Valley. Although initially free farmers, the valley was alternately ruled by the Swiss Confederacy, Savoy, Leventia and the Rusca family from about 1410 onwards. In the European Middle Ages, the population were mainly farmers, and since the early 17th century, many residents had to leave for seasonal labour outside their home valley. Often unemployed young men were recruited as mercenaries for foreign armies. In two quarries granite is mined by local workers.

 

The so-called Rustici (Italian for farm house) in grey stone, with white borders on the windows and heavy stone roofs, are typical houses in the valley. Wood rafters are used to support the heavy stone roof, Castanea sativa wood. Many chapels along the way bear witness to the deep faith of the inhabitants of the valley. Valle Vercasza was the origin of many of the region's so-called Spazzacamini (literally: chimney sweep children).

 

Tourism

 

With the connection to the public transport, tourism developed from the end of the 19th century, but the majority of young people from the Valley still look for income opportunities in wealthier regions of Switzerland or northern Italy. Currently the majority of locals are active in the tourism trade. The conversion of the old Rustici houses into holiday houses created jobs, increased tourism revenues and ensured that the old houses and the characteristic image of the Verzasca Valley are preserved.

 

The mountaintop with views of the Valais, Bernese, Glarus and Grisons Alps, as well as the many transitions in the side and neighbouring valleys are popular to mountain hikers, and around a dozen mountain huts provide accommodation and meals. The Verzasca is popular to canoeists and divers, but considered to be dangerous and difficult. The Verzasca Dam is also well known for its 220 m height jump, which is one of the highest jumps in the world and also the most famous bungy jump, as it was used in the James Bond film GoldenEye.

 

Transportation

 

The only valley access for road traffic and the Postauto buses are bounded from Tenero or Gordola. The starting on the left side of the valley road (built from 1866 to 1871) crosses Vogorno, Corippo, Lavertezzo, Brione (Verzasca), Gerra (Verzasca), Frasco and ends in Sonogno; a short road leads to Corippo. On the right side of the valley, the road and post road trips from Locarno ends in Mergoscia.

 

(Wikipedia)

 

Das Verzascatal (italienisch Valle Verzasca) ist ein Tal im Schweizer Kanton Tessin, das zum Bezirk Locarno gehört. Im Verzascatal liegen die Ortschaften Mergoscia, Vogorno, Corippo, Lavertezzo, Brione (Verzasca), Gerra (Verzasca), Frasco und Sonogno. Ausser Mergoscia, das als eigene Gemeinde zum Kreis Navegna gehört, sind heute alle zur Gemeinde Verzasca zusammengeschlossen, die identisch mit dem Kreis Verzasca ist.

 

Lage

 

Das Verzascatal ist ein wildes Tal mit steilen Hängen und unzähligen Wasserfällen. Die Verzascahäuser (Rustici) aus grauem Stein mit weissen Umrandungen an den Fenstern und schweren Steinplattendächern sind typisch für das Tal. Die Kapellen entlang der Wege zeugen vom religiösen Glauben der Talbewohner.

 

Das Verzascatal ist mit Mergoscia das geometrische Zentrum des Tessins. Es ist das einzige Tal, das nur an Tessiner Täler grenzt. Es liegt zwischen der Leventina und dem Maggiatal und erstreckt sich über eine Länge von 25 km in Süd-Nord-Richtung nördlich des Lago Maggiore. Der Talboden liegt auf 500 bis 900 m ü. M. Die Berge, die das ganze Tal umrahmen, haben eine durchschnittliche Höhe von 2400 m ü. M. Das Tal wird vom Fluss Verzasca durchflossen, der am Talausgang gestaut wird und den Lago di Vogorno bildet, bevor er in der Magadinoebene in der Nähe des Ticino in den Lago Maggiore fliesst.

 

Die Seitentäler des Valle Verzasca sind von folgenden Dörfern aus erreichbar: Auf der rechten Talseite: das Val Resa und Valle di Mergoscia von Mergoscia; das Val di Corippo von Corippo; das Val d’Orgnana und Valle del Cansgell von Lavertezzo; das Val d’Osura von Brione; das Val Redòrta und Val Vegornèss von Sonogno. Auf der linken Talseite: das Val della Porta von Vogorno; das Val Carecchio, Val Pincascia und Val d’Agro von Lavertezzo; das Val Mött von Gerra; das Val d’Efra von Frasco.

 

Klima, Flora und Fauna

 

Aufgrund der unterschiedlichen Höhenlagen sind in der Valle Verzasca viele Klimazonen vereint. Tenero-Contra und Gordola gehören dank tiefer Meereshöhe, Seenähe und dem Schutz der Berge des Verzascatales vor den Nordwinden zur insubrischen Klimaregion. Weinberge und mediterrane Vegetation profitieren hier vom mildesten Klima der Schweiz, Nebel sind selten und Regenfälle von kurzer Dauer. Dieses Klima zieht sich weit in das Tal hinein, in dem Reben, Kastanienwälder und Palmen gedeihen. Es geht dann mit zunehmender Höhe über das Hügel- und Bergklima bis in die Regionen mit alpinem Klima (über 2000 m ü. M.). Wegen der Unterschiede in der Bodenbeschaffenheit und der Höhe können im Verzascatal fast alle im Tessin vorkommenden Pflanzen- und Tierarten der verschiedenen Umweltzonen angetroffen werden.

 

Die von den Römern eingeführte Edelkastanie (Castanea sativa) ist im südlichen Teil des Tales, unterhalb 1000 m, die dominierende Baumart. Ihr Holz hat ähnliche Eigenschaften wie die Tropenhölzer. Die Kastanienwälder werden seit den 1950er-Jahren nicht mehr bewirtschaftet, da es sich meist um Niederwälder handelt. Im Verzasca können in der Nähe von Dörfern und Maiensässen (monti) «auf den Stock gesetzte» Kastanienbäume, etwa auf Mannshöhe abgesägte Baumstümpfe, gefunden werden. Da die Kastanie die Fähigkeit hat, aus dem abgesägten Baumstumpf wieder auszutreiben (Stockausschlag), musste solange gewartet werden (etwa zehn Jahre), bis die Triebe den gewünschten Umfang erreichten, um zum Beispiel als Balken für die tonnenschweren Steindächer eingesetzt werden zu können. Im Jahre 2005 publizierte Studien über Versuchsanlagen schlagen vor, das wertvolle Kastanienholz wieder als Wertholz – zum Beispiel für Parkettböden – zu nutzen.

 

Im Verzascatal hat sich die alte Ziegenrasse Nera-Verzasca-Ziege erhalten, die der römischen Ziege sehr ähnlich sieht, wie aufgrund von Hornfunden in Augusta Raurica nachgewiesen werden konnte. Diese mittelalterliche Robustziege hat kurzes Haar, an dem Schnee nicht haftet.

 

Wirtschaft

 

Früher betrieb die Bevölkerung hauptsächlich Landwirtschaft, das heisst vor allem Weidewirtschaft. Ab dem 14. Jahrhundert überwinterten Einwohner mit ihrem Vieh in der Magadinoebene. Seit dem 17. Jahrhundert fand eine saisonale Auswanderung zur Erwerbstätigkeit statt. Arbeitslose und abenteuerlustige Männer liessen sich als Söldner für fremde Kriegsdienste anwerben. Piccoli spazzacamini (italienisch für kleine Schornsteinfeger) nannte man im 19. und frühen 20. Jahrhundert in Italien und im Tessin die Buben, die vor allem in den Städten Norditaliens als Kaminfegerkinder arbeiten mussten.

 

Seit 1873 wird in zwei Steinbrüchen von einheimischen Arbeitern Granit abgebaut. Mit dem Anschluss an den öffentlichen Verkehr entwickelte sich ab Ende des 19. Jahrhunderts der Tourismus. Im späteren 19. Jahrhundert, nach dem kalifornischen Goldrausch, begann auch im Verzascatal die Tradition der Kalifornienwanderung, die teilweise als Ersatz für die abgebrochene ältere europäische Auswanderungstradition angesehen werden kann.

 

Während der Krise der 1930er-Jahre breitete sich die Arbeitslosigkeit auch im Verzasca aus, und da auch Amerika die Grenzen geschlossen hatte, war auch die Auswanderung nicht mehr möglich.

 

Um der arbeitslosen Bevölkerung zu helfen, wurde das «Komitee für die Tätigkeiten in Heimarbeit» («Comitato per i lavori casalinghi a domicilio») gegründet. Die Talbewohner wurden mit typischen handwerklichen Tätigkeiten beschäftigt: Wollfärbung mit natürlichen Farben (Blättern, Wurzeln und Früchten, die vor Ort vorhanden sind), Handspinnerei, Strickerei und Holzarbeiten, um ihre finanzielle Not zu lindern. Daraus entwickelte sich 1933 die «Pro Verzasca», eine örtliche Vereinigung zur Wahrung der moralischen und materiellen Interessen der Region und ihrer besten Eigenschaften.

 

Der Umbau der alten Verzascahäuser (Rustici) in Ferienhäuser schafft Arbeitsplätze, erhöht die Tourismuseinnahmen und sorgt dafür, dass die alten Häuser und das charakteristische Ortsbild erhalten bleiben.

 

Im Jahre 1990 waren nur noch 20 Prozent der Beschäftigten im Landwirtschaftssektor tätig.

 

Verkehr

 

Der einzige Talzugang für den Autoverkehr und das Postauto ist im Süden ab Tenero oder Gordola. Die auf der linken Talseite beginnende Kantonsstrasse führt über Vogorno, Corippo, Lavertezzo, Brione (Verzasca), Gerra (Verzasca), Frasco und endet in Sonogno. Sie wurde erst in den Jahren 1866 bis 1871 gebaut. Eine kurze Stichstrasse führt nach Corippo.

 

Auf der rechten Talseite endet die Strasse und Postautostrecke ab Locarno bereits in Mergoscia.

 

Tourismus

 

Die vielen Gipfel mit Sicht auf die Walliser-, Berner und Glarner- und Bündneralpen sowie die zahlreichen Übergänge in die Seiten- und Nachbartäler machen das Valle Verzasca zu einem Anziehungspunkt für Bergwanderer. Die Berghütten Cornavosa, Barone, Cognora, Efra, Osola, Fümegna und Borgna bieten Unterkunft.

 

Der Sentierone Valle Verzasca ist ein rot-weiss markierter Wanderweg (Bergweg), der von Tenero aus oberhalb des Lago di Vogorno oder via Mergoscia und später entlang der Verzasca in mehreren Etappen bis nach Sonogno führt.

 

Die Via Alta della Verzasca (VAV) gilt als eine der wildesten Bergwanderungen der Schweiz (SAC-Wanderskala = T6). Sie führt über verlassene Alpen, schroffe Gräben und schwer zugängliche Seitentäler und verbindet fünf Hütten miteinander. Die Route ist blau-weiss markiert und die schwierigsten Stellen sind mit Sicherungen (Drahtseile, Metallbügel) versehen. Die VAV führt oft durch sehr ausgesetztes Gelände mit Kletterstellen, so dass sie nur für erfahrene Berggänger zu empfehlen ist.

 

Die Bergwanderung Trekking 700 von Mesocco (GR) nach Formazza (I) führt durch das Valle Verzasca: die 4. Etappe: Biasca – Capanna Efra, die 5. Etappe: Capanna Efra – Sonogno und die 6. Etappe: Sonogno – Prato-Sornico.

 

Der Verzasca-Fluss ist unter Kanuten und Tauchern beliebt, gilt aber als schwierig bis gefährlich.

 

Über Geschichte und Gegenwart des Tales informiert das Museo di Val Verzasca in Sonogno.

 

Geschichte

 

Wegen seiner schweren Erreichbarkeit gilt das Verzascatal als eines der Täler, das am besten seine Ursprünglichkeit bewahren konnte. Die abgelegene geographische Lage machte es für die Eroberer uninteressant.

 

Zeugen einer sehr frühen Besiedlung der Verzasca-Region fanden sich an der Mündung der Verzasca. Dort wurden Steinarten aus der jüngeren Steinzeit (1800 v. Chr.) gefunden. In Berzona, einem Ortsteil (frazione) von Vogorno, liegt am Wanderweg ein grosser Schalenstein, der Sass di Striöi (Hexenstein), der vermutlich um 600 bis 700 v. Chr. bearbeitet wurde. Insgesamt gibt es im Verzascatal rund neunzig derartig eingemeisselte Felsen. In Tenero wurde 1880 eine bedeutende römische Nekropole aus dem 1. und 2. Jahr. n. Chr. entdeckt. Die Funde (Bronzen, Amphoren, Münzen) befinden sich im archäologischen Museum des Castello dei Visconti in Locarno.

 

Vermutlich um 1000 n. Chr. gründeten die Talbewohner eine Gemeinschaft (comunità) bestehend aus den vier Dorfgenossenschaften (vicinie): Vogorno (mit Corippo), Lavertezzo, Brione (mit Gerra) und Frasco (mit Sonogno). Die Gemeinschaft gehörte zum Pieve von Locarno, gegen den sie sich 1398 auflehnte. Zwischen 1410 und 1500 geriet das Tal abwechselnd unter die Herrschaft der Eidgenossen, Savoyer, Leventiner und der Rusca. Nach 1686 konnte sich die Gemeinschaft von den Marcacci Vögten befreien. 1803 wurde das Verzascatal ein Kreis (circolo) mit dem Hauptort Lavertezzo. In religiöser Hinsicht gehörte das Verzascatal bis zum 13. Jahrhundert zur Pfarrei San Vittore di Locarno.

 

Geologie

 

Einzigartig für die Region ist der spektakulär gefärbte Gneis. Es handelt sich um einen Oligoklasgneis, der unter dem Handelsnamen Serizzo bekannt ist. Die Farben verlaufen zwischen Braun, Schwarz, Grau und Weiss. Die Gesteine des benachbarten Valle Maggia sind dagegen meist rein grau.

 

(Wikipedia)

Sutton Cold-field

Canon EF 35mm F2

Sex Trafficking

•The AVERAGE age a trafficking victim is forced into the sex trade is 13.

The average life expectancy thereafter is 7 years.

•Worldwide, it is estimated between 700K - 4 million women, children and men are trafficked each year

•No region is unaffected

•An estimated 14,500 to 17,500 women and children are trafficked into this the USA each year

•There have been reports of trafficking instances in at least 20 different states, with most cases occurring in New York, California, and Florida.

•INS and Labor Department officials fear that the problem is not only bigger than they thought but also getting worse. For example, INS has discovered 250 brothels in 26 different cities, which likely involved trafficking victims.

Globally:

•UNICEF reports that across the world, there are over one million children entering the sex trade every year and that approximately 30 million children have lost their childhood through sexual exploitation over the past 30 years.

•The U.S. Department of State estimates that about 600,000 to 800,000 people - mostly women and children - are trafficked across national borders annually.

India:

•More than 2.3 million girls and women were believed to be in the sex industry,

•There were approximately three million trafficking victims in the country, and two thousand rescues a year.

•According to an International Labor Organization (ILO) estimate, 15 percent of the country's estimated 2.3 million prostitutes WERE CHILDREN, while the UN reported that an estimated 40 percent of prostitutes were BELOW 18 YEARS OF AGE.

USA:

•With an estimated 100K to 150K slaves in the U.S., fewer than 1,000 victims have been assisted

Demand:

•Prostitution in the Philippines is a de facto legal industry that is now the fourth largest source of gross national product (GNP) for the country. 13

•300,000 sex tourists from Japan alone are believed to visit the Philippines every year. 14

•The sex industry in the Netherlands is estimated to make most $1 billion each year. 15

•68-80% of women in its sex industry are from other countries, a factor highly indicative of sex trafficking

Inspired by the amazing work of Jason Salavon.

 

blog post about how to do it with ImageMagick

 

my blog

Map of average property prices paid in 2013 in England and Wales. Based on price-paid data from the Land Registry.

 

Sales were binned by postcode into 1km x 1km squares aligned with the OS National Grid, and the average taken for each cell.

 

Colourised by quintile; blue is cheapest 20%, white is mid-price, red is most expensive 20%. There' were around 780,000 sales, with around 16 sales per km^2 cell on average.

 

Cartogram version

 

Rendered in QGIS; data munged with a Python script and SQLite.

With a $2.2 million average sales price for 2011 to 2021 Pagani Huayra models, the mid-engine layout is balanced with a 44% front to 56% rear weight distribution. A hand-built Mercedes-AMG 6-liter V12 twin-turbo engine (M158) delivers 730-horsepower and 738 lb-ft of torque for a 0-60 mph gallop of 2.8 seconds. A transverse sequential 7-speed transmission with driving modes pairs with the AMG. Top speed is rated at 238 mph as progressive Pirelli performance tires heat up the track and jetpack-ed quad exhaust pipes sing with enthusiasm. Powerful Brembo carbon-ceramic rotors (6-piston front, 4-piston rear) are at your disposal when slower speeds are required. The interior is custom-crafted with titanium, aluminum, and carbon fiber materials for an exquisite drive experience.

  

Average Big Kmart. For some reason it was busy that day.

On average March is our snowiest month and, so far, it has lived up to it. At our place in central Colorado March has, to date, delivered about 30 inches! In other parts of the state much more has accumulated. Most importantly, the snowpack is looking pretty good statewide!

Photo/Video shoot for his upcoming release.

This is a very average photo; perhaps even that gives it too much credit. I likely would never have shown it at all. Except that it noteworthy for a couple of reasons.

 

The main reason is that it is THE FIRST flower photo taken in 2016, and the first visit to a garden, albeit one not yet begun to be worked. First always implies more to come...and we all know there will be lots more to follow before too long.

 

The second reason of at least minor note...take a look at the camera information. It is accurate, as is the taken date. I visited the garden site just to see if anything was pushing up out of the ground. Snowdrops have been the first there in past years, so I took a snapshot camera along, just in case.

 

---------------------------------------

 

Now about Flickr, and how it is used. I've historically tried to upload one photo to the top of my stream each day...to give first look to my small number of contacts, before doing anything else with it. I have so many backlogged photos, though, that I'll be uploading more often than that...though still one at a time. I know this means that many of those photos will go unseen by those who interact solely through the 'people' link.

 

I upload many photos to my stream, but immediately move them down a bit from the top...so that contacts are not subjected to many uploads per day. These are mostly, but not exclusively flower photos, which don't seem to do nearly as well at the top of the stream anyway.

 

Point is if any of us really want to get a feel for the 'body of work'...even the most recent body...of anyone, a quick visit to her / his photostream is illustrative. Or, one can go to album(s) of particular interest. Seeing an entire album of flowers, or butterflies, or big birds, or whatever, is really a lot more interesting than just seeing the 'photo of the day' at the top of the stream.

 

(Just to illustrate, in a casual way, how little used photostreams are, here are my numbers. I have, right now, about three and three quarters million views. Of that, only a small number over 30,000 are photostream visits.)

 

The point of all of this is that because we all have so much to do, and in particular so much to do on or about Flickr, photostreams just don't get viewed often, and that's a bit sad. I can learn a whole lot more about any photographer looking at the first two or three pages of a stream than I ever could by just seeing a daily upload.

 

Anyway, enjoy this first of the year flower shot made by what is for all practical purposes an antique digital camera.

Epipactis x reinekei Bayer 1986, syn.: Epipactis helleborine x Epipactis muelleri, Epipactis reinekei

Family: Orchidaceae

EN: Reineke's Epipactis, DE: no name found

Slo.: Reinekejeva močvirnica

 

Dat.: July 22. 2012

Lat.: 46.37311 Long.: 13.58789 (WGS84)

Code: Bot_642/2012_IMG0543

 

Habitat: edge of an abandoned pasture in the midst of mixed forest; moderately incline mountain slope, southwest aspect; calcareous ground; elevation 625 m (2.050 feet); average precipitations ~ 3.000 mm/year, average temperature 7-9 deg C, alpine phytogeographical region.

 

Substratum: soil.

 

Place: Loška Koritnica valley; about 1 km north of Kluže historical fortress; left bank of the river Koritnica; about 120 m above the main road Bovec - Predel, East Julian Alps, Posočje, Slovenia EC.

 

Comment: In its habitus and details the plant shown in this observation corresponds well to the descriptions of Epipactis muelleri, a rare orchid in Slovenia and elswhere. Its characteristic traits from literature, which fit to this observation are:

- plant's height, number of leaves and flowers, length of inflorescence

- leaves growing +/- perpendicular to the stem and arching downwards sickle like

- leaves have conspicuous veins and wavy edges

- leaves are +/- uniformly distributed along the stem and in form and size gradually change to bracts

- stem is often to some extent zigzag shaped

- upper part of the light green and relatively thin stem is densely hairy

- sepals are yellow-greenish

- petals are paler

- hypochile is reddish-brown inside and has white rim

- pointed epichile is greenish white to yellowish white, sometimes with pinkish tint

- epichile has about the same width as length and has relatively inconspicuous bosses at the base

- transition between hypochile and epichile is distinctly wide

- the inflorescence is +/- one sided

- typical habitat is calcareous ground, forest edges and among bushes, roadsides

 

Yet, there are three traits of the flowers on my pictures, which don't fit to the descriptions of Epipactis muelleri.

- presence of rostellum (should be absent)

- pinkish edged and veined petals and (should be greenish- or yellowish-whitish)

- considerably pink epichile (should be whitish or yellowish-white)

This discrepancies point toward hybridization with Epipactis helleborine, which is a quite common species in the region.

 

From my pictures it is evident that the flowers have well developed rostellum (a small beak like extension from the upper edge of the stigma; small white 'blob' in the center of the flower; see Fig. 2 and 2b). The function of rostellum in allogamous orchids (proliferating by crosspollination with the help of insects) is to glue pollinia with pollen to the insects during their visit of the flower. Pollen is then transported to other plants and cross-pollinates them. Epipactis muelleri obligatory proliferates by autogamy, that is by self-pollination. Its flowers don't have rostellum. On the other hand, Epipactis helleborine is allogamous. The rostellum is well developed and function.

 

Pinkish edges and veins of the petals is another trait inherited from Epipactis helleborine, which, although very variable in itself, often has pinkish or reddish petals. The same can be said for pinkish epichile. The hybrid between Epipactis helleborine and Epipactis muelleri is named Epipactis x reinekei Bayer. Habitus of this hybrid is otherwise visually as well as morphometrically almost indistinguishable from Epipactis muelleri (Ref.7).

 

Protected according to: Uredba o zavarovanih prostoživečih rastlinskih vrstah, poglavje A, Uradni list RS, št. 46/2004 (Regulation of protected wild plants, chapter A, Official Gazette of Republic Slovenia, no. 46/2004), (2004).

 

Ref.:

(1) Personal communication with Mr. Branko Dolinar, www.orhideje.si

(2) M.A. Fischer, W. Adler, K. Oswald, Exkursionsflora für Österreich, Liechtenstein und Südtirol, LO Landesmuseen, Linz, Austria (2005), p 1035.

(3) A. Martinči et all., Mala Flora Slovenije (Flora of Slovenia - Key) (in Slovenian), Tehnična Založba Slovenije (2007), p 767.

(4) H. Kretzschmar, Die Orchideen Deutschlands und angrenzenden Lander, Quelle Meyer (2008), p 134 and p 258.

(5) B. Dolinar, Kukavičevke v Sloveniji (Orchidaceae of Slovenia) (in Slovenian), Pipinova Knjiga (2015), p 73.

(6) H. Baumann, S. Kuenkele, R.Lorenz, Orchideen Europas, Ulmer (2006), p 88.

(7) S. Künkele, Orchidaceae, in O. Sebald, S. Seybold, G. Philippi, A. Wӧrz, Eds., Die Farn und Blutenpflanzen Baden-Wurttembergs, Band 8., Verlag Eugen Ulmer (1998), p 443.

 

Average November morning in Vaasa

Some days are just a little bit more beautiful than others. This was one of those days.

 

Grand Anse Beach

Grand Anse, Grenada

These models come from a 1862 French magazine called 'journal des demoiselles' (more or less 'the young lady's journal', in English). Different monograms and a bedlinen border. The magazine was aimed at well-to-do young girls from the French bourgeoisie and mixed needlecraft, fashion plates and sentimental (though strictly respecting catholic tutorship -censorship ?-) short stories. It is quite clear that the needlecraft average skills at the time were MUCH HIGHER than what they are nowadays ;)

That's math talk for "Gravity is the curvature of spacetime." See here.

 

LBNL Building 2 skylight.

 

Olympus 9-18 @ 9mm, f/5.6. Several averaged ISO 100 exposures. Olympus E-620. This is the natural color, not a sepia conversion.

av·er·age /ˈævərɪdʒ, ˈævrɪdʒ/ Pronunciation Key - Show Spelled Pronunciation[av-er-ij, av-rij] Pronunciation Key - Show IPA Pronunciation noun, adjective, verb, -aged, -ag·ing.

 

–adjective 6. of or pertaining to an average; estimated by average; forming an average: The average rainfall there is 180 inches.

7. typical; common; ordinary: The average secretary couldn't handle such a workload. His grades were nothing special, only average.

     

i was not thinking about my sp today at all. there's a lot going on and i completely forgot about it til now. nothing seems to stand out today. nothing exciting, nothing great, nothing bad. just typical, common, ordinary...

 

i thought about making a reference to a boring picture/boring day, but decided against it. i was once told that being boring is a choice, and only boring people are bored. hence, "average day". that's what it was. just an average day. and that's good. :)

Allure of the Seas

 

Ship Statistics

 

Builder: STX Europe

Country Built In: Finland

Ship Completed Date: 12/5/2010

Capacity: 5400

Gross Tonnage: 222900

Stabilized: Yes

Average Speed: 22 knots

Length: 1184 feet

Beam: 154 feet

Number of Passenger Decks: 16

Number of Inside Rooms: 478

Number of Outside Rooms: 2222

Number of Pools: 4

Does it float: Yes (that one was mine ;-)

 

Sugarmill Stoke 23rd December 2019

Capitol Reef National Park is an American national park in south-central Utah. The park is approximately 60 miles (97 km) long on its north–south axis and just 6 miles (9.7 km) wide on average. The park was established in 1971 to preserve 241,904 acres (377.98 sq mi; 97,895.08 ha; 978.95 km2) of desert landscape and is open all year, with May through September being the highest visitation months.

 

Partially in Wayne County, Utah, the area was originally named "Wayne Wonderland" in the 1920s by local boosters Ephraim P. Pectol and Joseph S. Hickman. Capitol Reef National Park was designated a national monument on August 2, 1937, by President Franklin D. Roosevelt to protect the area's colorful canyons, ridges, buttes, and monoliths; however, it was not until 1950 that the area officially opened to the public. Road access was improved in 1962 with the construction of State Route 24 through the Fremont River Canyon.

 

The majority of the nearly 100 mi (160 km) long up-thrust formation called the Waterpocket Fold—a rocky spine extending from Thousand Lake Mountain to Lake Powell—is preserved within the park. Capitol Reef is an especially rugged and spectacular segment of the Waterpocket Fold by the Fremont River. The park was named for its whitish Navajo Sandstone cliffs with dome formations—similar to the white domes often placed on capitol buildings—that run from the Fremont River to Pleasant Creek on the Waterpocket Fold. Locally, reef refers to any rocky barrier to land travel, just as ocean reefs are barriers to sea travel.

 

Capitol Reef encompasses the Waterpocket Fold, a warp in the earth's crust that is 65 million years old. It is the largest exposed monocline in North America. In this fold, newer and older layers of earth folded over each other in an S-shape. This warp, probably caused by the same colliding continental plates that created the Rocky Mountains, has weathered and eroded over millennia to expose layers of rock and fossils. The park is filled with brilliantly colored sandstone cliffs, gleaming white domes, and contrasting layers of stone and earth.

 

The area was named for a line of white domes and cliffs of Navajo Sandstone, each of which looks somewhat like the United States Capitol building, that run from the Fremont River to Pleasant Creek on the Waterpocket Fold.

 

The fold forms a north-to-south barrier that has barely been breached by roads. Early settlers referred to parallel impassable ridges as "reefs", from which the park gets the second half of its name. The first paved road was constructed through the area in 1962. State Route 24 cuts through the park traveling east and west between Canyonlands National Park and Bryce Canyon National Park, but few other paved roads invade the rugged landscape.

 

The park is filled with canyons, cliffs, towers, domes, and arches. The Fremont River has cut canyons through parts of the Waterpocket Fold, but most of the park is arid desert. A scenic drive shows park visitors some highlights, but it runs only a few miles from the main highway. Hundreds of miles of trails and unpaved roads lead into the equally scenic backcountry.

 

Fremont-culture Native Americans lived near the perennial Fremont River in the northern part of the Capitol Reef Waterpocket Fold around the year 1000. They irrigated crops of maize and squash and stored their grain in stone granaries (in part made from the numerous black basalt boulders that litter the area). In the 13th century, all of the Native American cultures in this area underwent sudden change, likely due to a long drought. The Fremont settlements and fields were abandoned.

 

Many years after the Fremont left, Paiutes moved into the area. These Numic-speaking people named the Fremont granaries moki huts and thought they were the homes of a race of tiny people or moki.

 

In 1872 Almon H. Thompson, a geographer attached to United States Army Major John Wesley Powell's expedition, crossed the Waterpocket Fold while exploring the area. Geologist Clarence Dutton later spent several summers studying the area's geology. None of these expeditions explored the Waterpocket Fold to any great extent.

 

Following the American Civil War, officials of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Salt Lake City sought to establish missions in the remotest niches of the Intermountain West. In 1866, a quasi-military expedition of Mormons in pursuit of natives penetrated the high valleys to the west. In the 1870s, settlers moved into these valleys, eventually establishing Loa, Fremont, Lyman, Bicknell, and Torrey.

 

Mormons settled the Fremont River valley in the 1880s and established Junction (later renamed Fruita), Caineville, and Aldridge. Fruita prospered, Caineville barely survived, and Aldridge died. In addition to farming, lime was extracted from local limestone, and uranium was extracted early in the 20th century. In 1904 the first claim to a uranium mine in the area was staked. The resulting Oyler Mine in Grand Wash produced uranium ore.

 

By 1920 no more than ten families at one time were sustained by the fertile flood plain of the Fremont River and the land changed ownership over the years. The area remained isolated. The community was later abandoned and later still some buildings were restored by the National Park Service. Kilns once used to produce lime are still in Sulphur Creek and near the campgrounds on Scenic Drive.

 

Local Ephraim Portman Pectol organized a "booster club" in Torrey in 1921. Pectol pressed a promotional campaign, furnishing stories to be sent to periodicals and newspapers. In his efforts, he was increasingly aided by his brother-in-law, Joseph S. Hickman, who was the Wayne County High School principal. In 1924, Hickman extended community involvement in the promotional effort by organizing a Wayne County-wide Wayne Wonderland Club. That same year, Hickman was elected to the Utah State Legislature.

 

In 1933, Pectol was elected to the presidency of the Associated Civics Club of Southern Utah, successor to the Wayne Wonderland Club. The club raised U.S. $150 (equivalent to $3,391 in 2022) to interest a Salt Lake City photographer in taking a series of promotional photographs. For several years, the photographer, J. E. Broaddus, traveled and lectured on "Wayne Wonderland".

 

In 1933, Pectol was elected to the legislature and almost immediately contacted President Franklin D. Roosevelt and asked for the creation of "Wayne Wonderland National Monument" out of the federal lands comprising the bulk of the Capitol Reef area. Federal agencies began a feasibility study and boundary assessment. Meanwhile, Pectol guided the government investigators on numerous trips and escorted an increasing number of visitors. The lectures of Broaddus were having an effect.

 

Roosevelt signed a proclamation creating Capitol Reef National Monument on August 2, 1937. In Proclamation 2246, President Roosevelt set aside 37,711 acres (15,261 ha) of the Capitol Reef area. This comprised an area extending about two miles (3 km) north of present State Route 24 and about 10 mi (16 km) south, just past Capitol Gorge. The Great Depression years were lean ones for the National Park Service (NPS), the new administering agency. Funds for the administration of Capitol Reef were nonexistent; it would be a long time before the first rangers would arrive.

 

Administration of the new monument was placed under the control of Zion National Park. A stone ranger cabin and the Sulphur Creek bridge were built and some road work was performed by the Civilian Conservation Corps and the Works Progress Administration. Historian and printer Charles Kelly came to know NPS officials at Zion well and volunteered to watchdog the park for the NPS. Kelly was officially appointed custodian-without-pay in 1943. He worked as a volunteer until 1950, when the NPS offered him a civil-service appointment as the first superintendent.

 

During the 1950s Kelly was deeply troubled by NPS management acceding to demands of the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission that Capitol Reef National Monument be opened to uranium prospecting. He felt that the decision had been a mistake and destructive of the long-term national interest. It turned out that there was not enough ore in the monument to be worth mining.

 

In 1958 Kelly got additional permanent help in protecting the monument and enforcing regulations; Park Ranger Grant Clark transferred from Zion. The year Clark arrived, fifty-six thousand visitors came to the park, and Charlie Kelly retired for the last time.

 

During the 1960s (under the program name Mission 66), NPS areas nationwide received new facilities to meet the demand of mushrooming park visitation. At Capitol Reef, a 53-site campground at Fruita, staff rental housing, and a new visitor center were built, the latter opening in 1966.

 

Visitation climbed dramatically after the paved, all-weather State Route 24 was built in 1962 through the Fremont River canyon near Fruita. State Route 24 replaced the narrow Capitol Gorge wagon road about 10 mi (16 km) to the south that frequently washed out. The old road has since been open only to foot traffic. In 1967, 146,598 persons visited the park. The staff was also growing.

 

During the 1960s, the NPS purchased private land parcels at Fruita and Pleasant Creek. Almost all private property passed into public ownership on a "willing buyer-willing seller" basis.

 

Preservationists convinced President Lyndon B. Johnson to set aside an enormous area of public lands in 1968, just before he left office. In Presidential Proclamation 3888 an additional 215,056 acres (87,030 ha) were placed under NPS control. By 1970, Capitol Reef National Monument comprised 254,251 acres (102,892 ha) and sprawled southeast from Thousand Lake Mountain almost to the Colorado River. The action was controversial locally, and NPS staffing at the monument was inadequate to properly manage the additional land.

 

The vast enlargement of the monument and diversification of the scenic resources soon raised another issue: whether Capitol Reef should be a national park, rather than a monument. Two bills were introduced into the United States Congress.

 

A House bill (H.R. 17152) introduced by Utah Congressman Laurence J. Burton called for a 180,000-acre (72,800 ha) national park and an adjunct 48,000-acre (19,400 ha) national recreation area where multiple use (including grazing) could continue indefinitely. In the United States Senate, meanwhile, Senate bill S. 531 had already passed on July 1, 1970, and provided for a 230,000-acre (93,100 ha) national park alone. The bill called for a 25-year phase-out of grazing.

 

In September 1970, United States Department of Interior officials told a house subcommittee session that they preferred about 254,000 acres (103,000 ha) be set aside as a national park. They also recommended that the grazing phase-out period be 10 years, rather than 25. They did not favor the adjunct recreation area.

 

It was not until late 1971 that Congressional action was completed. By then, the 92nd United States Congress was in session and S. 531 had languished. A new bill, S. 29, was introduced in the Senate by Senator Frank E. Moss of Utah and was essentially the same as the defunct S. 531 except that it called for an additional 10,834 acres (4,384 ha) of public lands for a Capitol Reef National Park. In the House, Utah Representative K. Gunn McKay (with Representative Lloyd) had introduced H.R. 9053 to replace the dead H.R. 17152. This time, the House bill dropped the concept of an adjunct Capitol Reef National Recreation Area and adopted the Senate concept of a 25-year limit on continued grazing. The Department of Interior was still recommending a national park of 254,368 acres (102,939 ha) and a 10-year limit for grazing phase-out.

 

S. 29 passed the Senate in June and was sent to the House, which dropped its own bill and passed the Senate version with an amendment. Because the Senate was not in agreement with the House amendment, differences were worked out in Conference Committee. The Conference Committee issued its report on November 30, 1971, and the bill passed both houses of Congress. The legislation—'An Act to Establish The Capitol Reef National Park in the State of Utah'—became Public Law 92-207 when it was signed by President Richard Nixon on December 18, 1971.

 

The area including the park was once the edge of a shallow sea that invaded the land in the Permian, creating the Cutler Formation. Only the sandstone of the youngest member of the Cutler Formation, the White Rim, is exposed in the park. The deepening sea left carbonate deposits, forming the limestone of the Kaibab Limestone, the same formation that rims the Grand Canyon to the southwest.

 

During the Triassic, streams deposited reddish-brown silt that later became the siltstone of the Moenkopi Formation. Uplift and erosion followed. Conglomerate, followed by logs, sand, mud, and wind-transported volcanic ash, then formed the uranium-containing Chinle Formation.

 

The members of the Glen Canyon Group were all laid down in the middle- to late-Triassic during a time of increasing aridity. They include:

 

Wingate Sandstone: sand dunes on the shore of an ancient sea

Kayenta Formation: thin-bedded layers of sand deposited by slow-moving streams in channels and across low plains

Navajo Sandstone: huge fossilized sand dunes from a massive Sahara-like desert.

 

The Golden Throne. Though Capitol Reef is famous for white domes of Navajo Sandstone, this dome's color is a result of a lingering section of yellow Carmel Formation carbonate, which has stained the underlying rock.

The San Rafael Group consists of four Jurassic-period formations, from oldest to youngest:

 

Carmel Formation: gypsum, sand, and limey silt laid down in what may have been a graben that was periodically flooded by sea water

Entrada Sandstone: sandstone from barrier islands/sand bars in a near-shore environment

Curtis Formation: made from conglomerate, sandstone, and shale

Summerville Formation: reddish-brown mud and white sand deposited in tidal flats.

Streams once again laid down mud and sand in their channels, on lakebeds, and in swampy plains, creating the Morrison Formation. Early in the Cretaceous, similar nonmarine sediments were laid down and became the Dakota Sandstone. Eventually, the Cretaceous Seaway covered the Dakota, depositing the Mancos Shale.

 

Only small remnants of the Mesaverde Group are found, capping a few mesas in the park's eastern section.

 

Near the end of the Cretaceous period, a mountain-building event called the Laramide orogeny started to compact and uplift the region, forming the Rocky Mountains and creating monoclines such as the Waterpocket Fold in the park. Ten to fifteen million years ago, the entire region was uplifted much further by the creation of the Colorado Plateau. This uplift was very even. Igneous activity in the form of volcanism and dike and sill intrusion also occurred during this time.

 

The drainage system in the area was rearranged and steepened, causing streams to downcut faster and sometimes change course. Wetter times during the ice ages of the Pleistocene increased the rate of erosion.

 

There are more than 840 species of plants that are found in the park and over 40 of those species are classified as rare and endemic.

 

The closest town to Capitol Reef is Torrey, about 11 mi (18 km) west of the visitor center on Highway 24, slightly west of its intersection with Highway 12. Its 2020 population is less than 300. Torrey has a few motels and restaurants and functions as a gateway town to Capitol Reef National Park. Highway 12, as well as a partially unpaved scenic backway named the Burr Trail, provide access from the west through the Grand Staircase–Escalante National Monument and the town of Boulder.

 

A variety of activities are available to tourists, both ranger-led and self-guided, including auto touring, hiking, backpacking, camping, bicycling (on paved and unpaved roads only; no trails), horseback riding, canyoneering, and rock climbing. The orchards planted by Mormon pioneers are maintained by the National Park Service. From early March to mid-October, various fruit—cherries, apricots, peaches, pears, or apples—can be harvested by visitors for a fee.

 

A hiking trail guide is available at the visitor center for both day hikes and backcountry hiking. Backcountry access requires a free permit.

 

Numerous trails are available for hiking and backpacking in the park, with fifteen in the Fruita District alone. The following trails are some of the most popular in the park:

 

Cassidy Arch Trail: a very steep, strenuous 3.5 mi (5.6 km) round trip that leads into the Grand Wash to an overlook of the Cassidy Arch.

Hickman Bridge Trail: a 2 mi (3.2 km) round trip leading to the natural bridge.

Frying Pan Trail: an 8.8 mi (14.2 km) round trip that passes the Cassidy Arch, Grand Wash, and Cohab Canyon.

Brimhall Natural Bridge: a popular, though strenuous, 4.5 mi (7.2 km) round trip with views of Brimhall Canyon, the Waterpocket Fold, and Brimhall Natural Bridge.

Halls Creek Narrows: 22 mi (35 km) long and considered strenuous, with many side canyons and creeks; typically hiked as a 2-3 day camping trip.

 

Visitors may explore several of the main areas of the park by private vehicle:

 

Scenic Drive: winds through the middle of the park, passing the major points of interest; the road is accessible from the visitor center to approximately 2 mi (3.2 km) into the Capitol Gorge.

Notom-Bullfrog Road: traverses the eastern side of the Waterpocket Fold, along 10 mi (16 km) of paved road, with the remainder unpaved.

Cathedral Road: an unpaved road through the northern areas of the park, that traverses Cathedral Valley, passing the Temples of the Sun and Moon.

 

The primary camping location is the Fruita campground, with 71 campsites (no water, electrical, or sewer hookups), and restrooms without bathing facilities. The campground also has group sites with picnic areas and restrooms. Two primitive free camping areas are also available.

 

Canyoneering is growing in popularity in the park. It is a recreational sport that takes one through slot canyons. It involves rappelling and may require swimming and other technical rope work. Day-pass permits are required for canyoneering in the park, and can be obtained for free from the visitor's center or through email. It's key to know that each route requires its own permit. If one is planning on canyoneering for multiple days, passes are required for each day. Overnight camping as part of the canyoneering trip is permitted, but one must request a free backcountry pass from the visitor center.

 

It is imperative to plan canyoneering trips around the weather. The Colorado Plateau is susceptible to flash flooding during prime rainy months. Because canyoneering takes place through slot canyons, getting caught in a flash flood could be lethal. Take care to consult reliable weather sources. The Weather Atlas shows charts with the monthly average rainfall in inches.

 

Another risk to be aware of during the summer months is extreme heat. Visitors can find weather warnings on the National Weather Service website. The heat levels are detailed by a color and numerical scale (0-4).

 

One of the most popular canyoneering routes in Capitol Reef National Park is Cassidy Arch Canyon. A paper by George Huddart, details the park's commitment to working with citizens to maintain the route as well as the vegetation and rocks. The canyon route is approximately 2.3 miles long (0.4 miles of technical work), consisting of 8 different rappels, and takes between 2.5 and 4.5 hours to complete. The first rappel is 140 ft and descends below the famous Cassidy Arch.

 

Utah is a landlocked state in the Mountain West subregion of the Western United States. It borders Colorado to its east, Wyoming to its northeast, Idaho to its north, Arizona to its south, and Nevada to its west. Utah also touches a corner of New Mexico in the southeast. Of the fifty U.S. states, Utah is the 13th-largest by area; with a population over three million, it is the 30th-most-populous and 11th-least-densely populated. Urban development is mostly concentrated in two areas: the Wasatch Front in the north-central part of the state, which is home to roughly two-thirds of the population and includes the capital city, Salt Lake City; and Washington County in the southwest, with more than 180,000 residents. Most of the western half of Utah lies in the Great Basin.

 

Utah has been inhabited for thousands of years by various indigenous groups such as the ancient Puebloans, Navajo, and Ute. The Spanish were the first Europeans to arrive in the mid-16th century, though the region's difficult geography and harsh climate made it a peripheral part of New Spain and later Mexico. Even while it was Mexican territory, many of Utah's earliest settlers were American, particularly Mormons fleeing marginalization and persecution from the United States via the Mormon Trail. Following the Mexican–American War in 1848, the region was annexed by the U.S., becoming part of the Utah Territory, which included what is now Colorado and Nevada. Disputes between the dominant Mormon community and the federal government delayed Utah's admission as a state; only after the outlawing of polygamy was it admitted in 1896 as the 45th.

 

People from Utah are known as Utahns. Slightly over half of all Utahns are Mormons, the vast majority of whom are members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church), which has its world headquarters in Salt Lake City; Utah is the only state where a majority of the population belongs to a single church. A 2023 paper challenged this perception (claiming only 42% of Utahns are Mormons) however most statistics still show a majority of Utah residents belong to the LDS church; estimates from the LDS church suggests 60.68% of Utah's population belongs to the church whilst some sources put the number as high as 68%. The paper replied that membership count done by the LDS Church is too high for several reasons. The LDS Church greatly influences Utahn culture, politics, and daily life, though since the 1990s the state has become more religiously diverse as well as secular.

 

Utah has a highly diversified economy, with major sectors including transportation, education, information technology and research, government services, mining, multi-level marketing, and tourism. Utah has been one of the fastest growing states since 2000, with the 2020 U.S. census confirming the fastest population growth in the nation since 2010. St. George was the fastest-growing metropolitan area in the United States from 2000 to 2005. Utah ranks among the overall best states in metrics such as healthcare, governance, education, and infrastructure. It has the 12th-highest median average income and the least income inequality of any U.S. state. Over time and influenced by climate change, droughts in Utah have been increasing in frequency and severity, putting a further strain on Utah's water security and impacting the state's economy.

 

The History of Utah is an examination of the human history and social activity within the state of Utah located in the western United States.

 

Archaeological evidence dates the earliest habitation of humans in Utah to about 10,000 to 12,000 years ago. Paleolithic people lived near the Great Basin's swamps and marshes, which had an abundance of fish, birds, and small game animals. Big game, including bison, mammoths and ground sloths, also were attracted to these water sources. Over the centuries, the mega-fauna died, this population was replaced by the Desert Archaic people, who sheltered in caves near the Great Salt Lake. Relying more on gathering than the previous Utah residents, their diet was mainly composed of cattails and other salt tolerant plants such as pickleweed, burro weed and sedge. Red meat appears to have been more of a luxury, although these people used nets and the atlatl to hunt water fowl, ducks, small animals and antelope. Artifacts include nets woven with plant fibers and rabbit skin, woven sandals, gaming sticks, and animal figures made from split-twigs. About 3,500 years ago, lake levels rose and the population of Desert Archaic people appears to have dramatically decreased. The Great Basin may have been almost unoccupied for 1,000 years.

 

The Fremont culture, named from sites near the Fremont River in Utah, lived in what is now north and western Utah and parts of Nevada, Idaho and Colorado from approximately 600 to 1300 AD. These people lived in areas close to water sources that had been previously occupied by the Desert Archaic people, and may have had some relationship with them. However, their use of new technologies define them as a distinct people. Fremont technologies include:

 

use of the bow and arrow while hunting,

building pithouse shelters,

growing maize and probably beans and squash,

building above ground granaries of adobe or stone,

creating and decorating low-fired pottery ware,

producing art, including jewelry and rock art such as petroglyphs and pictographs.

 

The ancient Puebloan culture, also known as the Anasazi, occupied territory adjacent to the Fremont. The ancestral Puebloan culture centered on the present-day Four Corners area of the Southwest United States, including the San Juan River region of Utah. Archaeologists debate when this distinct culture emerged, but cultural development seems to date from about the common era, about 500 years before the Fremont appeared. It is generally accepted that the cultural peak of these people was around the 1200 CE. Ancient Puebloan culture is known for well constructed pithouses and more elaborate adobe and masonry dwellings. They were excellent craftsmen, producing turquoise jewelry and fine pottery. The Puebloan culture was based on agriculture, and the people created and cultivated fields of maize, beans, and squash and domesticated turkeys. They designed and produced elaborate field terracing and irrigation systems. They also built structures, some known as kivas, apparently designed solely for cultural and religious rituals.

 

These two later cultures were roughly contemporaneous, and appear to have established trading relationships. They also shared enough cultural traits that archaeologists believe the cultures may have common roots in the early American Southwest. However, each remained culturally distinct throughout most of their existence. These two well established cultures appear to have been severely impacted by climatic change and perhaps by the incursion of new people in about 1200 CE. Over the next two centuries, the Fremont and ancient Pueblo people may have moved into the American southwest, finding new homes and farmlands in the river drainages of Arizona, New Mexico and northern Mexico.

 

In about 1200, Shoshonean speaking peoples entered Utah territory from the west. They may have originated in southern California and moved into the desert environment due to population pressure along the coast. They were an upland people with a hunting and gathering lifestyle utilizing roots and seeds, including the pinyon nut. They were also skillful fishermen, created pottery and raised some crops. When they first arrived in Utah, they lived as small family groups with little tribal organization. Four main Shoshonean peoples inhabited Utah country. The Shoshone in the north and northeast, the Gosiutes in the northwest, the Utes in the central and eastern parts of the region and the Southern Paiutes in the southwest. Initially, there seems to have been very little conflict between these groups.

 

In the early 16th century, the San Juan River basin in Utah's southeast also saw a new people, the Díne or Navajo, part of a greater group of plains Athabaskan speakers moved into the Southwest from the Great Plains. In addition to the Navajo, this language group contained people that were later known as Apaches, including the Lipan, Jicarilla, and Mescalero Apaches.

 

Athabaskans were a hunting people who initially followed the bison, and were identified in 16th-century Spanish accounts as "dog nomads". The Athabaskans expanded their range throughout the 17th century, occupying areas the Pueblo peoples had abandoned during prior centuries. The Spanish first specifically mention the "Apachu de Nabajo" (Navaho) in the 1620s, referring to the people in the Chama valley region east of the San Juan River, and north west of Santa Fe. By the 1640s, the term Navaho was applied to these same people. Although the Navajo newcomers established a generally peaceful trading and cultural exchange with the some modern Pueblo peoples to the south, they experienced intermittent warfare with the Shoshonean peoples, particularly the Utes in eastern Utah and western Colorado.

 

At the time of European expansion, beginning with Spanish explorers traveling from Mexico, five distinct native peoples occupied territory within the Utah area: the Northern Shoshone, the Goshute, the Ute, the Paiute and the Navajo.

 

The Spanish explorer Francisco Vázquez de Coronado may have crossed into what is now southern Utah in 1540, when he was seeking the legendary Cíbola.

 

A group led by two Spanish Catholic priests—sometimes called the Domínguez–Escalante expedition—left Santa Fe in 1776, hoping to find a route to the California coast. The expedition traveled as far north as Utah Lake and encountered the native residents. All of what is now Utah was claimed by the Spanish Empire from the 1500s to 1821 as part of New Spain (later as the province Alta California); and subsequently claimed by Mexico from 1821 to 1848. However, Spain and Mexico had little permanent presence in, or control of, the region.

 

Fur trappers (also known as mountain men) including Jim Bridger, explored some regions of Utah in the early 19th century. The city of Provo was named for one such man, Étienne Provost, who visited the area in 1825. The city of Ogden, Utah is named for a brigade leader of the Hudson's Bay Company, Peter Skene Ogden who trapped in the Weber Valley. In 1846, a year before the arrival of members from the Church of Jesus Christ of latter-day Saints, the ill-fated Donner Party crossed through the Salt Lake valley late in the season, deciding not to stay the winter there but to continue forward to California, and beyond.

 

Members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, commonly known as Mormon pioneers, first came to the Salt Lake Valley on July 24, 1847. At the time, the U.S. had already captured the Mexican territories of Alta California and New Mexico in the Mexican–American War and planned to keep them, but those territories, including the future state of Utah, officially became United States territory upon the signing of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, February 2, 1848. The treaty was ratified by the United States Senate on March 10, 1848.

 

Upon arrival in the Salt Lake Valley, the Mormon pioneers found no permanent settlement of Indians. Other areas along the Wasatch Range were occupied at the time of settlement by the Northwestern Shoshone and adjacent areas by other bands of Shoshone such as the Gosiute. The Northwestern Shoshone lived in the valleys on the eastern shore of Great Salt Lake and in adjacent mountain valleys. Some years after arriving in the Salt Lake Valley Mormons, who went on to colonize many other areas of what is now Utah, were petitioned by Indians for recompense for land taken. The response of Heber C. Kimball, first counselor to Brigham Young, was that the land belonged to "our Father in Heaven and we expect to plow and plant it." A 1945 Supreme Court decision found that the land had been treated by the United States as public domain; no aboriginal title by the Northwestern Shoshone had been recognized by the United States or extinguished by treaty with the United States.

 

Upon arriving in the Salt Lake Valley, the Mormons had to make a place to live. They created irrigation systems, laid out farms, built houses, churches, and schools. Access to water was crucially important. Almost immediately, Brigham Young set out to identify and claim additional community sites. While it was difficult to find large areas in the Great Basin where water sources were dependable and growing seasons long enough to raise vitally important subsistence crops, satellite communities began to be formed.

 

Shortly after the first company arrived in the Salt Lake Valley in 1847, the community of Bountiful was settled to the north. In 1848, settlers moved into lands purchased from trapper Miles Goodyear in present-day Ogden. In 1849, Tooele and Provo were founded. Also that year, at the invitation of Ute chief Wakara, settlers moved into the Sanpete Valley in central Utah to establish the community of Manti. Fillmore, Utah, intended to be the capital of the new territory, was established in 1851. In 1855, missionary efforts aimed at western native cultures led to outposts in Fort Lemhi, Idaho, Las Vegas, Nevada and Elk Mountain in east-central Utah.

 

The experiences of returning members of the Mormon Battalion were also important in establishing new communities. On their journey west, the Mormon soldiers had identified dependable rivers and fertile river valleys in Colorado, Arizona and southern California. In addition, as the men traveled to rejoin their families in the Salt Lake Valley, they moved through southern Nevada and the eastern segments of southern Utah. Jefferson Hunt, a senior Mormon officer of the Battalion, actively searched for settlement sites, minerals, and other resources. His report encouraged 1851 settlement efforts in Iron County, near present-day Cedar City. These southern explorations eventually led to Mormon settlements in St. George, Utah, Las Vegas and San Bernardino, California, as well as communities in southern Arizona.

 

Prior to establishment of the Oregon and California trails and Mormon settlement, Indians native to the Salt Lake Valley and adjacent areas lived by hunting buffalo and other game, but also gathered grass seed from the bountiful grass of the area as well as roots such as those of the Indian Camas. By the time of settlement, indeed before 1840, the buffalo were gone from the valley, but hunting by settlers and grazing of cattle severely impacted the Indians in the area, and as settlement expanded into nearby river valleys and oases, indigenous tribes experienced increasing difficulty in gathering sufficient food. Brigham Young's counsel was to feed the hungry tribes, and that was done, but it was often not enough. These tensions formed the background to the Bear River massacre committed by California Militia stationed in Salt Lake City during the Civil War. The site of the massacre is just inside Preston, Idaho, but was generally thought to be within Utah at the time.

 

Statehood was petitioned for in 1849-50 using the name Deseret. The proposed State of Deseret would have been quite large, encompassing all of what is now Utah, and portions of Colorado, Idaho, Nevada, Wyoming, Arizona, Oregon, New Mexico and California. The name of Deseret was favored by the LDS leader Brigham Young as a symbol of industry and was derived from a reference in the Book of Mormon. The petition was rejected by Congress and Utah did not become a state until 1896, following the Utah Constitutional Convention of 1895.

 

In 1850, the Utah Territory was created with the Compromise of 1850, and Fillmore (named after President Fillmore) was designated the capital. In 1856, Salt Lake City replaced Fillmore as the territorial capital.

 

The first group of pioneers brought African slaves with them, making Utah the only place in the western United States to have African slavery. Three slaves, Green Flake, Hark Lay, and Oscar Crosby, came west with this first group in 1847. The settlers also began to purchase Indian slaves in the well-established Indian slave trade, as well as enslaving Indian prisoners of war. In 1850, 26 slaves were counted in Salt Lake County. Slavery didn't become officially recognized until 1852, when the Act in Relation to Service and the Act for the relief of Indian Slaves and Prisoners were passed. Slavery was repealed on June 19, 1862, when Congress prohibited slavery in all US territories.

 

Disputes between the Mormon inhabitants and the federal government intensified after the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints' practice of polygamy became known. The polygamous practices of the Mormons, which were made public in 1854, would be one of the major reasons Utah was denied statehood until almost 50 years after the Mormons had entered the area.

 

After news of their polygamous practices spread, the members of the LDS Church were quickly viewed by some as un-American and rebellious. In 1857, after news of a possible rebellion spread, President James Buchanan sent troops on the Utah expedition to quell the growing unrest and to replace Brigham Young as territorial governor with Alfred Cumming. The expedition was also known as the Utah War.

 

As fear of invasion grew, Mormon settlers had convinced some Paiute Indians to aid in a Mormon-led attack on 120 immigrants from Arkansas under the guise of Indian aggression. The murder of these settlers became known as the Mountain Meadows massacre. The Mormon leadership had adopted a defensive posture that led to a ban on the selling of grain to outsiders in preparation for an impending war. This chafed pioneers traveling through the region, who were unable to purchase badly needed supplies. A disagreement between some of the Arkansas pioneers and the Mormons in Cedar City led to the secret planning of the massacre by a few Mormon leaders in the area. Some scholars debate the involvement of Brigham Young. Only one man, John D. Lee, was ever convicted of the murders, and he was executed at the massacre site.

 

Express riders had brought the news 1,000 miles from the Missouri River settlements to Salt Lake City within about two weeks of the army's beginning to march west. Fearing the worst as 2,500 troops (roughly 1/3rd of the army then) led by General Albert Sidney Johnston started west, Brigham Young ordered all residents of Salt Lake City and neighboring communities to prepare their homes for burning and evacuate southward to Utah Valley and southern Utah. Young also sent out a few units of the Nauvoo Legion (numbering roughly 8,000–10,000), to delay the army's advance. The majority he sent into the mountains to prepare defenses or south to prepare for a scorched earth retreat. Although some army wagon supply trains were captured and burned and herds of army horses and cattle run off no serious fighting occurred. Starting late and short on supplies, the United States Army camped during the bitter winter of 1857–58 near a burned out Fort Bridger in Wyoming. Through the negotiations between emissary Thomas L. Kane, Young, Cumming and Johnston, control of Utah territory was peacefully transferred to Cumming, who entered an eerily vacant Salt Lake City in the spring of 1858. By agreement with Young, Johnston established the army at Fort Floyd 40 miles away from Salt Lake City, to the southwest.

 

Salt Lake City was the last link of the First Transcontinental Telegraph, between Carson City, Nevada and Omaha, Nebraska completed in October 1861. Brigham Young, who had helped expedite construction, was among the first to send a message, along with Abraham Lincoln and other officials. Soon after the telegraph line was completed, the Deseret Telegraph Company built the Deseret line connecting the settlements in the territory with Salt Lake City and, by extension, the rest of the United States.

 

Because of the American Civil War, federal troops were pulled out of Utah Territory (and their fort auctioned off), leaving the territorial government in federal hands without army backing until General Patrick E. Connor arrived with the 3rd Regiment of California Volunteers in 1862. While in Utah, Connor and his troops soon became discontent with this assignment wanting to head to Virginia where the "real" fighting and glory was occurring. Connor established Fort Douglas just three miles (5 km) east of Salt Lake City and encouraged his bored and often idle soldiers to go out and explore for mineral deposits to bring more non-Mormons into the state. Minerals were discovered in Tooele County, and some miners began to come to the territory. Conner also solved the Shoshone Indian problem in Cache Valley Utah by luring the Shoshone into a midwinter confrontation on January 29, 1863. The armed conflict quickly turned into a rout, discipline among the soldiers broke down, and the Battle of Bear River is today usually referred to by historians as the Bear River Massacre. Between 200 and 400 Shoshone men, women and children were killed, as were 27 soldiers, with over 50 more soldiers wounded or suffering from frostbite.

 

Beginning in 1865, Utah's Black Hawk War developed into the deadliest conflict in the territory's history. Chief Antonga Black Hawk died in 1870, but fights continued to break out until additional federal troops were sent in to suppress the Ghost Dance of 1872. The war is unique among Indian Wars because it was a three-way conflict, with mounted Timpanogos Utes led by Antonga Black Hawk fighting federal and Utah local militia.

 

On May 10, 1869, the First transcontinental railroad was completed at Promontory Summit, north of the Great Salt Lake. The railroad brought increasing numbers of people into the state, and several influential businessmen made fortunes in the territory.

 

Main article: Latter Day Saint polygamy in the late-19th century

During the 1870s and 1880s, federal laws were passed and federal marshals assigned to enforce the laws against polygamy. In the 1890 Manifesto, the LDS Church leadership dropped its approval of polygamy citing divine revelation. When Utah applied for statehood again in 1895, it was accepted. Statehood was officially granted on January 4, 1896.

 

The Mormon issue made the situation for women the topic of nationwide controversy. In 1870 the Utah Territory, controlled by Mormons, gave women the right to vote. However, in 1887, Congress disenfranchised Utah women with the Edmunds–Tucker Act. In 1867–96, eastern activists promoted women's suffrage in Utah as an experiment, and as a way to eliminate polygamy. They were Presbyterians and other Protestants convinced that Mormonism was a non-Christian cult that grossly mistreated women. The Mormons promoted woman suffrage to counter the negative image of downtrodden Mormon women. With the 1890 Manifesto clearing the way for statehood, in 1895 Utah adopted a constitution restoring the right of women's suffrage. Congress admitted Utah as a state with that constitution in 1896.

 

Though less numerous than other intermountain states at the time, several lynching murders for alleged misdeeds occurred in Utah territory at the hand of vigilantes. Those documented include the following, with their ethnicity or national origin noted in parentheses if it was provided in the source:

 

William Torrington in Carson City (then a part of Utah territory), 1859

Thomas Coleman (Black man) in Salt Lake City, 1866

3 unidentified men at Wahsatch, winter of 1868

A Black man in Uintah, 1869

Charles A. Benson in Logan, 1873

Ah Sing (Chinese man) in Corinne, 1874

Thomas Forrest in St. George, 1880

William Harvey (Black man) in Salt Lake City, 1883

John Murphy in Park City, 1883

George Segal (Japanese man) in Ogden, 1884

Joseph Fisher in Eureka, 1886

Robert Marshall (Black man) in Castle Gate, 1925

Other lynchings in Utah territory include multiple instances of mass murder of Native American children, women, and men by White settlers including the Battle Creek massacre (1849), Provo River Massacre (1850), Nephi massacre (1853), and Circleville Massacre (1866).

 

Beginning in the early 20th century, with the establishment of such national parks as Bryce Canyon National Park and Zion National Park, Utah began to become known for its natural beauty. Southern Utah became a popular filming spot for arid, rugged scenes, and such natural landmarks as Delicate Arch and "the Mittens" of Monument Valley are instantly recognizable to most national residents. During the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s, with the construction of the Interstate highway system, accessibility to the southern scenic areas was made easier.

 

Beginning in 1939, with the establishment of Alta Ski Area, Utah has become world-renowned for its skiing. The dry, powdery snow of the Wasatch Range is considered some of the best skiing in the world. Salt Lake City won the bid for the 2002 Winter Olympics in 1995, and this has served as a great boost to the economy. The ski resorts have increased in popularity, and many of the Olympic venues scattered across the Wasatch Front continue to be used for sporting events. This also spurred the development of the light-rail system in the Salt Lake Valley, known as TRAX, and the re-construction of the freeway system around the city.

 

During the late 20th century, the state grew quickly. In the 1970s, growth was phenomenal in the suburbs. Sandy was one of the fastest-growing cities in the country at that time, and West Valley City is the state's 2nd most populous city. Today, many areas of Utah are seeing phenomenal growth. Northern Davis, southern and western Salt Lake, Summit, eastern Tooele, Utah, Wasatch, and Washington counties are all growing very quickly. Transportation and urbanization are major issues in politics as development consumes agricultural land and wilderness areas.

 

In 2012, the State of Utah passed the Utah Transfer of Public Lands Act in an attempt to gain control over a substantial portion of federal land in the state from the federal government, based on language in the Utah Enabling Act of 1894. The State does not intend to use force or assert control by limiting access in an attempt to control the disputed lands, but does intend to use a multi-step process of education, negotiation, legislation, and if necessary, litigation as part of its multi-year effort to gain state or private control over the lands after 2014.

 

Utah families, like most Americans everywhere, did their utmost to assist in the war effort. Tires, meat, butter, sugar, fats, oils, coffee, shoes, boots, gasoline, canned fruits, vegetables, and soups were rationed on a national basis. The school day was shortened and bus routes were reduced to limit the number of resources used stateside and increase what could be sent to soldiers.

 

Geneva Steel was built to increase the steel production for America during World War II. President Franklin D. Roosevelt had proposed opening a steel mill in Utah in 1936, but the idea was shelved after a couple of months. After the attack on Pearl Harbor, the United States entered the war and the steel plant was put into progress. In April 1944, Geneva shipped its first order, which consisted of over 600 tons of steel plate. Geneva Steel also brought thousands of job opportunities to Utah. The positions were hard to fill as many of Utah's men were overseas fighting. Women began working, filling 25 percent of the jobs.

 

As a result of Utah's and Geneva Steels contribution during the war, several Liberty Ships were named in honor of Utah including the USS Joseph Smith, USS Brigham Young, USS Provo, and the USS Peter Skene Ogden.

 

One of the sectors of the beachhead of Normandy Landings was codenamed Utah Beach, and the amphibious landings at the beach were undertaken by United States Army troops.

 

It is estimated that 1,450 soldiers from Utah were killed in the war.