Virgin River Country

EXPLORE THE PRIMITIVE OUTBACK ARIZONA'S REMOTE NORTHWEST CORNER HE LAND BETWEEN THE RIVERS

This is a startling world, part forest, part barren and desolate, a graveyard for giant rocks and sharp red cliffs that lie in the distance. The sky in this country is every-where, and everything on Earth no matter how long or how high is reduced to the size of a child's model. Every flat-topped mesa or jagged cliff, no matter how close, seems distant, mirage-like. The sky, like the miles between the rivers, appears unending. This is the world between the Colorado and the Virgin rivers, two ribbons in the high desert that helped to sculpt the lonely and re-mote plateaus of northwestern Arizona.

Hardly anyone goes to this isolated corner of Arizona because it's so far from any major population center. In the last 23 years, I've been through it only three times. There is no easy way in and nothing in the way of man-made attractions once you manage to arrive. There is, however, a natural attraction: the appearance of the Earth in its primitive form, 5.1 million acres of land largely without people, yet with enough reminders of early explorations to provide the feel of an arid landscape where Nature wrestled man to the ground. There are an estimated 6,000 miles of dirt roads in this strange terrain called the Arizona Strip, and not nearly as many people. There also is a two-lane paved road that will take you part

You get a feel for the unique geology of the area. The Arizona Strip is a block of the Earth's crust that has been uplifted and tilted to the northeast.

of the way between the rivers before it swings you north into Utah. Most people in the Arizona Strip are there temporarily, as visitors to the North Rim of the Grand Canyon or as travelers to southwestern Utah. The Bureau of Land Management, which has jurisdiction over most of this remote country, recently joined with the few small communities in the area to come up with a plan to introduce the traveling public to this wild terrain using a visitor friendly network of roads. The major roads in this network - one flows into the other - are U.S. Route 89A and State Route 389 in Arizona, and Utah Route 59 and Interstate 15 in Utah, which takes you south into Arizona. The BLM calls these combined routes the Vermilion Cliffs Highways and plans to erect interpretive signs and rest stops where visitors can learn more about the country.

The area known as the Arizona Strip - essentially all of northwestern Arizona - is defined by the Colorado River, which flows into Arizona from the north. At the Arizona-Utah border near Page, the Colorado makes a large curve to the south and east, pushing its way between the red bluffs of the Kaibab and Kaibito plateaus until it reaches Marble Canyon (128 miles north of Flagstaff). Up to that point, the Colorado River and the much smaller Virgin River, far off in the western corner of Arizona, are running more or less parallel. At Marble Canyon, the Colorado takes a sharp turn to the west and for the next 200 miles careens through its most famous feature, the Grand Canyon. All of the land between the Colorado River and the Utah border is called the Arizona Strip, though a case could logically be made for calling it the Arizona Rectangle instead.

On a crisp fall morning, I headed into this country mainly because I wanted to visit the Virgin River Gorge, a place I'd never seen before. I'd been told that driving through the Virgin River Gorge is like driving through the bottom of the Grand Canyon, though the only way to "drive" through the bottom of the Grand Canyon is on a boat. I also was intrigued with the idea that the Virgin River and the Virgin Mountains are generally unknown to people living in Arizona. I spent my first night in Flagstaff, the major city in northern Arizona. Early the next morning I headed north on U.S. 89, quickly leaving Flagstaff's vast volcanic peaks behind me and entering the sandcastle terrain on the western side of the Navajo Indian Reservation. About 100 miles north of Flagstaff, Route 89 swings north and east to Page, and Route 89A

It's a very easy place to lose your way or bottom out in isolated country where tourist services are nonexistent.

heads north and west to Marble Canyon, the North Rim of the Grand Canyon, and the Arizona Strip. As the road bends on to Route 89A, you see the inspiration of the BLM's name for this network of highways: the Vermilion Cliffs. The steep cliffs which may be pink, brown, purple, or maroon, depending on the time of day and the cloud cover - rise from the red dirt and jade-colored sagebrush on the north side of the highway. Pull over and look around; this is God's personal gift to Mr. Kodak and Mr. Fuji.

As the road climbs the 42 miles from Marble Canyon to Jacob Lake (where there is no lake), you begin to get a feel for the unique geology of the area. The Arizona Strip is a block of the Earth's crust that has been uplifted and tilted to the northeast. Over time this block has been divided into a series of elongated and nearly isolated north-south trending plateaus including the Shivwits Plateau (the western-most plateau), the Uinkaret Plateau, the Kaibab Plateau, and the Marble Platform. The cliffs along these plateaus range from 200 to more than 400 feet high. About two miles west of Marble Canyon Lodge, and just before the road passes Cliff Dwellers Lodge, it skirts one of the most Scenic and bizarre spots along the whole route, a place where sandstone boulders appear to have rolled off the surrounding cliffs and suddenly congealed into shapes that look like objects created for a Steven Spielberg adventure flick. The road from Cliff Dwellers to Jacob Lake is narrow, and about 10 miles before you get to Jacob Lake Inn the road makes a couple of switchbacks, promptly taking you from high desert into small junipers and suddenly into ponderosa pine trees. In a matter of minutes, you pass the 6,000-foot elevation mark and find yourself at 7,800 feet and in a dense forest of pine, spruce, and aspen. Jacob Lake Inn and Restaurant is at the junction of Route 89A and State 67, the 45-mile-long scenic road that leads to the North Rim of the Grand Canyon. The inn rents small primitive cabins. Be sure to call ahead for reservations.

Leaving Jacob Lake, the road cuts a graceful path through a dense forest of pine trees and begins dropping in elevation. When you come to a scenic overlook 10.5 miles west of Jacob Lake, the road has already dropped 1,100 feet to an altitude of 6,700 feet. If you had any doubts about the vastness of the terrain you are entering, the view from the overlook will make you a believer: in the plain below, it appears that little grows, but the sky and this Paleolithic landscape are broken by two enormous plateaus visible in the distance: the Uinkaret Plateau and the Hurricane Cliffs, platforms of the Gods, places of ritual, too foreign and majestic to grasp, too far removed from the experiences of everyday life in a city or town. These are great slabs of rock that appear untouched since the day the Earth groaned and heaved and thrust another flat mountain through the barren crust of the land. From the overlook, you see the heart of the Arizona Strip, an area roughly 85 miles east to west from Kanab Creek to the Nevada border, and roughly 40 to 80 miles north to south from the Utah border to the undulating rim of the Grand Canyon.

believer: in the plain below, it appears that little grows, but the sky and this Paleolithic landscape are broken by two enormous plateaus visible in the distance: the Uinkaret Plateau and the Hurricane Cliffs, platforms of the Gods, places of ritual, too foreign and majestic to grasp, too far removed from the experiences of everyday life in a city or town. These are great slabs of rock that appear untouched since the day the Earth groaned and heaved and thrust another flat mountain through the barren crust of the land. From the overlook, you see the heart of the Arizona Strip, an area roughly 85 miles east to west from Kanab Creek to the Nevada border, and roughly 40 to 80 miles north to south from the Utah border to the undulating rim of the Grand Canyon.

Few people live in this enormous landscape, only in tiny Fredonia, 30 miles northwest of Jacob Lake; and there are park rangers at Pipe Spring National Monument, 14 miles west of Fredonia on State 389. At Colorado City, on the Arizona-Utah border, there is a growing religious community of polygamous families. (See Arizona Highways, August '94.) Otherwise the area is populated only by ranches scattered many miles apart.

Perhaps because of its proximity to Utah and perhaps because it is so isolated, the Arizona Strip has for at least 100 years been associated with polygamy. At the end of the last century, when polygamy was outlawed by the federal government, members of the Mormon faith officially banned it, too. However, some who disagreed with the ban, or who couldn't abide by it for practical reasons, simply moved their "extra" wives to Fredonia or Pipe Spring in the Arizona Strip, where they were somewhat removed from the eyes of prying officials. In 1888 there were so many of these extra wives living at Pipe Spring that the place was jokingly referred to as "Adamless Eden." The families at Short Creek, now called Colorado City, disagreed with the ban on religious grounds and split off from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Mormons) and continue the practice of plural marriages to this day. Colorado City and the Utah border are

It isn't unusual to have a 10-foot wall of water come rushing down the dry riverbed on a summer day when the sky overhead is perfectly clear.

Roughly 20 miles northwest of Pipe Spring, and the next major city, St. George, Utah, is about 50 miles northwest of Colorado City on Utah Route 59. It's possible to head south and west across the strip from Pipe Spring on unpaved roads, but it's also a very easy place to lose your way or bottom out in isolated country where tourist services are nonexistent. Do yourself a favor and head for St. George, which offers the best access to the Virgin River Gorge, easily one of the most astonishing driving experiences in Arizona. There are 29.5 miles between St. George, Utah, and a hiccup-size Arizona community called Littlefield. The 29 miles of Interstate 15 that connects the two places (actually it's the road to Las Vegas) was built through the incredible cliffs of the Virgin River Gorge at a cost of $61 million, or roughly $2 million a mile, making it, as Littlefield Postmaster Nora Reber told me, not only one of the most scenic routes in the country, but also one of the most expensive roads in rural America. The road took 13 years to build and was dedicated in 1973. Eleven of the 29 miles descend from Black Rock Canyon in the north to the mouth of the Virgin River Gorge in the south. In those 11 miles, the highway crosses the river six times. At 12 places in the gorge, the river was relocated during construction. Geologists say you can see 500 million years of Earth history in the stratified cliffs on both sides of the road, but that assumes you can take your eyes off the road for a second to have a look. Take our advice: wait until you've arrived at the Cedar Pockets Campground at the center of the gorge before trying to study geology; otherwise you too may become a part of geologic history.

Sections of the lower gorge are only 150 feet wide, flanked by vertical walls 300 to 500 feet high. The walls are the only visible portions of peaks that rise a little more than 2,000 feet above the river. The canyon is so narrow and deep in parts of the lower gorge that the sun never hits some sections during the winter months. The most unnerving characteristic about this gorge is that it appears lopsided. The vertical cliffs are often pitched at strange diagonals, so that it is possible to get the sensation that you are driving sideways.

If you are alert, you may be lucky enough to see bighorn sheep perched on crags in the lower gorge. The Arizona Game and Fish Department transplanted 61 sheep to three locations in the Virgin Mountains in 1981, and the population has increased over the years. The Virgin Mountains also are prime habitat for other wildlife, including Gambel's quail, desert tortoises, cougars, bobcats, and deer.

When visiting this area, keep in mind that the gorge is a place of extremes: summer temperatures can get up to 120° F.; winter temperatures may dip as low as zero. Furthermore, the river has a history of flooding in all months of the year. The Virgin River starts life as two forks, the North Fork collecting water from creeks north of Zion National Park, the East Fork collecting water from creeks south and west of Bryce Canyon. Both forks come together between Springdale and Rockville, Utah, about 30 miles northeast of St. George, and rush southwestward from St. George to Lake Mead.

Portions of the river usually are dry from spring through September, yet it isn't unusual to have a 10-foot wall of water suddenly come rushing down the dry riverbed on a summer day when the sky overhead is perfectly clear the result of heavy summer storms upriver at Zion National Park. In calmer times, it's possible for adventurers to make a white-water rafting trip through the gorge. The strip may require more of its visitors than less remote spots, but the rewards are many.