Tag: Highway 50

Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park

The black canyon of the Gunnison is deep — 1,800 to 2,700 feet from the rim to the river. And it’s narrow — so narrow that parts of the canyon floor get only 33 minutes of sunlight a day.

This gorge has been formed by the same Gunnison River that fills Blue Mesa Reservoir to the east. The river and its canyon are very old, and that accounts for a curious thing.

As you can see from the photo below, taken looking south, the park is on land that is higher than the surrounding area, 1,600 feet higher, in fact.

The river has cut its gorge through this high plateau, yet the level of the river bed is below that of the surrounding area. This raises an interesting question: Why does the river run through the plateau, instead of going the lower, easier way around?

The answer: The river’s course was already set before a gradual raising of the ground (called the Gunnison Uplift) began, two to three million years ago. Instead of changing course, the river simply carried on, resulting in the canyon (and the National Park) we can visit today. The park entrance is on Route 50, just east of Montrose, Colorado.

You can go all the way down there, if you choose.

Grand Junction, Colorado, and Dalton Trumbo

Dalton Trumbo was born in 1905 in Montrose, Colorado, an hour south of this bathtub.

His family moved to Grand Junction when he was three. He grew up and graduated from high school there, and wrote for the Grand Junction Daily Sentinel.

He continued writing as an adult and became an accomplished novelist — Johnny Got His Gun, an anti-war novel, won a National Book Award in 1939. His greatest success, however, came as a screenwriter. He wrote screenplays for Hollywood movies including Roman Holiday, Exodus, Spartacus, and Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo.

Controversy surrounded his work for Hollywood, though, due to his political advocacy. Accused — accurately, as he admitted — of Communist sympathies during the Red Scare period of the 1940’s and 50’s, Trumbo was called to testify before the House Un-American Activities Committee. He refused to provide information on other communist sympathizers, denounced the congressional committee, and was convicted of contempt of Congress. His appeal to the Supreme Court failed, and he spent eleven months in a federal penitentiary. His reaction: “As far as I was concerned, it was a completely just verdict. I had contempt for that Congress and have had contempt for several years since.”

Nine other writers experienced the same fate. They, along with Trumbo, were “blacklisted,” which meant the entertainment industry refused to hire them, and they became known as the Hollywood Ten. As time went on, over 100 other professionals were blacklisted, as well.

Trumbo wrote some of his most successful screenplays during the blacklist period. Two, Roman Holiday and The Brave One, won Academy Awards for best story, but they were attributed to other writers. Eventually, through support in the early 1960’s from director Otto Preminger and actor Kirk Douglas, he was properly credited for his work.

Dalton Trumbo was known to write his screenplays in the bathtub, and the sculpture shown here is based on a photo taken in his home in 1967. The work was installed in front of the Avalon movie theater on Grand Junction’s Main Street in 2007.

As you can see, the sculpture is outside, and winters in Grand Junction are cold. The polished handles on the bathtub faucet, however, suggest that passers-by have tried to warm up Dalton’s bath water.

Colorado National Monument

Colorado National Monument is just west of Grand Junction, Colorado and just south of Route 50.

It features spectacular scenery, viewable from Rim Rock Drive, which follows the edge of the park’s plateau above the Colorado River valley to the north.

Route 50 is down there somewhere

The edge of the plateau is so high, and the drop-offs so steep, they can be vertigo-inducing.

All that separates you from those drop-offs is the “guard rail” shown below. If you have trouble with heights, you might find yourself straddling the road’s center line to stay away from the edge.

The San Rafael Reef, Utah

The San Rafael Reef is the eastern edge of a 2000 square mile area called the San Rafael Swell, an anticline, or dome, formed when the surface of the earth was pushed up some 50 million years ago.

The reef is formed of sandstone and stretches for roughly 75 miles. For years, it was an effective barrier to the wild and unclaimed lands of the swell to its west, because only deep, narrow, and winding slot canyons penetrated it.

In 1970, two lanes of highway were opened through the reef as part of the Interstate highway system. It took until the mid-1980s for the road to be expanded to four lanes.

The canyon chosen as the basis for the route was so narrow a person could touch both sides at once. To mark the route, surveyors wore body harnesses and hung suspended 400 feet above the canyon floor.

To give you an idea of the scale, those aren’t dirt specks on the highway in the photo above, they’re cars and trucks.

The photo below shows Route 50 climbing through the reef.

At the top.

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San Rafael Reef, Utah

January 12, 2017

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Capitol Reef National Park

You might choose to loop south from Route 50 in Utah to visit Capitol Reef National Park, which is spectacular yet not overwhelmed with tourists.

The park’s name comes from a huge, largely impassable ridge which was called a “reef” by early settlers, along with white sandstone domes that resemble the tops of capitol buildings.

It was established in 1971 to protect the Waterpocket Fold, a 100-mile long warp in the earth’s crust. The fold is a geologic feature called a monocline, formed 50 to 70 million years ago. Today it exposes rock strata that are more than 200 million years old. The exposed rock looms high over the main road through the park, imposing and rugged.

In the early 1900′s, fruit orchards were planted in the flood plain of the Fremont River, which runs through the park. Some orchards still survive, and you can pick fruit yourself. One has been converted to the park’s campground, an oasis of green in a dry, rocky landscape.

It’s about 80 miles from Route 50 to the park from either the east or west on Utah Highway 24. The approach to the park from the east is itself worth seeing, alternating scenes of spectacle and desolation.

Salina, Utah

Salina is a small town at the intersection of Route 50 and Interstate 70. It generally rains less than eight inches a year here, which classifies the surrounding territory as desert.

If you look at the picture closely, you’ll see that Mom’s Cafe serves scones. I’ve eaten there, and I’ve had one. Although quite different than a scone from a big-city bakery, it was pretty good.

Delta, Utah and Sevier Lake

Delta, Utah is roughly 40 miles upstream from Sevier Lake. Sevier Lake is dry. The picture above shows one of the reasons.

Delta is an agricultural town on the Sevier River, which would drain into Sevier Lake if Delta didn’t use most of the river’s water for irrigation. Delta is surrounded by lush farm fields, to the substantial benefit of the town.

When Sevier Lake was first observed by settlers in 1872, there was water in it, but it turns out that has rarely occurred since. What you see in the picture below is called Sevier Lake, but it is actually the dry surface of an ancient lake in the Sevier Desert.

That’s not water you see

The lake did have water in it In 2011. It was a year with a lot of rain, and upstream reservoirs dumped excess water into the river. As a result the lake reached a depth of … three feet.

Lately, the dry lake has been found to contain potassium sulfate, which is used in fertilizer, so there may be mining here in the future.