Capitol Reef National Park

Capitol Reef National Park is a United States National Park, in south-central Utah. The park is approximately long on its northsouth axis but an average of just wide. The park was established in 1971 to preserve of desert landscape and is open all year with May through September being the highest visitation months. Located 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 initially designated a National Monument on August 2, 1937 by President Franklin D. Roosevelt in order 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. Easy road access only came in 1962 with the construction of State Route 24 through the Fremont River Canyon. The majority of the nearly long up-thrust formation called the Waterpocket Folda rocky spine extending from Thousand Lake Mountain to Lake Powellis preserved within the park. Capitol Reef is the name of an especially rugged and spectacular segment of the Waterpocket Fold by the Fremont River. The park was named for a line of cliffs of white Navajo Sandstone with dome formationssimilar to the white domes often placed on capitol buildingsthat run from the Fremont River to Pleasant Creek on the Waterpocket Fold. The local word reef refers to any rocky barrier to land travel, just as ocean reefs are barriers to sea travel.