By M.C. O’Bryant

For The Transcript

Capitol Reef National Park, located 175 miles or so south of Salt Lake City, Utah, has been labeled by many National Park aficionados as a “Best kept secret.” It is isolated, but, loyalists see the miles of harsh terrain surrounding its boundaries simply as nature’s bridal veil hiding the face of the park’s awe inspiring beauty. It is one of the most spectacular, yet, one of the least visited of the National Parks.

Those relatively few intrepid adventurous enthusiasts who arrive at the park are gloriously rewarded with a vast assortment of cascading colors and fantasyland rock formations. The park’s delightful array of hoodoos and stunning vermillion cliffs has made it a must see, when touring Utah’s much ballyhooed, Standing up country, which encompasses two other National Parks, Zion and Bryce canyon. Hoodoos, stone formations found in abundance throughout the region, have been shaped by the forces of nature to look to the imaginative mind like caricatures of both man and beast.

A ‘young’ park

One of the lesser-known national parks not only because of its remoteness but, also because of its relatively young age (not having been designated as a national park until 1971), Capitol Reef abounds with storied accounts of its early inhabitants ranging from early Mormon pioneers who envisioned building exalted communities where angels might abide, to an impenetrable hideaway for what could well be America’s most romanticized outlaws, Butch Cassidy and the Sun Dance Kid.

In the late 1800s a vein of uranium (the stuff of which atomic bombs are made), was discovered in a mountainside near what is today the north end of the park. Three quarters of a century before Einstein’s formula E-MC2 led to the use of radioactive uranium, from other sources, to build atomic bombs that ultimately ended World War II, local entrepreneurs were busy selling tonics laced with uranium taken from the Capitol Reef mines as a cure for rheumatism. The practice, long since recognized as a very bad idea, was halted and today, access to the mineshafts is barred by iron grating welded into place at the mine entrances. What happened to the arthritic sufferers who imbibed the uranium cocktails remains a mystery.

However, if the giant sequoia-sized cottonwood trees growing in the vicinity of the mines is any indication, the minerals found in the soil, if not uranium, must contain some other highly charged properties.

A more plausible explanation for the amazing growth and longevity of the more than century old trees is that they have been the beneficiaries of a very effective irrigation system developed by early Mormon pioneers in the late 1800s. The Park’s ranger tells me that Capitol Reef’s strange sounding name is an eponymous composite. Capitol, he explained was devised by the early settlers who found the mega domes in the park resembled the domes crowning the state and national capitol buildings. Reef was tacked on by later visitors who thought the Waterpocket Fold resembled an exposed ocean reef.

Diverse visitors

The nationalities of foreign visitors to Capitol Reef National Park is vastly diverse, with Europeans and Asians leading the way, serving as a reminder of how nature’s wondrous renderings transcend human differences.

Packed with the added emotion of nostalgia, I have given my just completed visit to Capital Reef National Park an off-the-charts rating. As experienced by so many other visitors to the park it has truly been a life-changing event. Remembering my first venture into Capitol Reef nearly a half century ago and more than a decade before the area was designated as a National Park has added immensely to the enjoyment of my most recent visit there in April.

Traveling the new paved roads through and around the seemingly bottomless canyons and dry washes that, back during my first visit, served alternately as roads during the dry season and rampaging flood channels during the frequent flash flood occurrences, gave me the opportunity to relax and enjoy the park’s elaborate grandeur as never before.