
History Native Americans and Mormons įremont-culture Native Americans lived near the perennial Fremont River in the northern part of the Capitol Reef Waterpocket Fold around the year 1000. Hundreds of miles of trails and unpaved roads lead into the equally scenic backcountry. A scenic drive shows park visitors some highlights, but it runs only a few miles from the main highway. The Fremont River has cut canyons through parts of the Waterpocket Fold, but most of the park is arid desert. The park is filled with canyons, cliffs, towers, domes, and arches. 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 first paved road was constructed through the area in 1962. Early settlers referred to parallel impassable ridges as "reefs", from which the park gets the second half of its name. The fold forms a north-to-south barrier that has barely been breached by roads. 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 park is filled with brilliantly colored sandstone cliffs, gleaming white domes, and contrasting layers of stone and earth. 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. In this fold, newer and older layers of earth folded over each other in an S-shape. It is the largest exposed monocline in North America. Ĭapitol Reef encompasses the Waterpocket Fold, a warp in the earth's crust that is 65 million years old. Locally, reef refers to any rocky barrier to land travel, just as ocean reefs are barriers to sea travel. 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.

Capitol Reef is an especially rugged and spectacular segment of the Waterpocket Fold by the Fremont River. 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.

Road access was improved in 1962 with the construction of State Route 24 through the Fremont River Canyon. 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. Capitol Reef National Park was designated a national monument on August 2, 1937, by President Franklin D. Partially in Wayne County, Utah, the area was originally named "Wayne Wonderland" in the 1920s by local boosters Ephraim P. The park was established in 1971 to preserve 241,904 acres (377.98 sq mi 97,895.08 ha 978.95 km 2) of desert landscape and is open all year, with May through September being the highest visitation months.

The park is approximately 60 miles (97 km) long on its north–south axis and just 6 miles (9.7 km) wide on average.
