Salt Lake City to Arches National Park

The Salt Lake Temple, visible to the northwest, took forty years to build, from 1853 to 1893.

The Rio Grande Depot near this stretch of 500 South was built in 1910 and cost over a million dollars at the time, roughly thirty million in today's money.

You're driving through what was once one of the most polluted valleys in North America.

You're passing through Point of the Mountain, a narrow gap between the Wasatch Range to the east and the Traverse Mountains to the west.

Lehi Roller Mills has been grinding flour here since 1906 and became a cultural landmark when it appeared in the 1984 movie Footloose.

You're driving through one of the most earthquake-prone zones in the interior United States.

Utah Lake, which you're passing near, is the largest freshwater lake in the state at about 150 square miles.

The town of Spanish Fork takes its name directly from the 1776 Dominguez-Escalante Expedition, two Franciscan friars who left Santa Fe in July seeking an overland route…

Spanish Fork Canyon is one of the few natural breaches through the entire Wasatch Range, which is why every major transportation route has funneled through this same…

The rock layers closing in around you right now are mostly Cretaceous-age sandstones and shales, roughly 70 to 100 million years old, deposited when an interior seaway…

In April 1983, a rain-soaked mountainside gave way here and sent roughly twenty-one million cubic yards of earth sliding into Spanish Fork Canyon.

You're gaining elevation quickly here, moving through a geological transition between the Wasatch Range and the Tavaputs Plateau.

You're crossing Soldier Summit, elevation seven thousand four hundred seventy-seven feet, named for soldiers from the Crook Command who died here during a brutal winter…

You're now leaving the Wasatch Front behind.

The steep escarpment running along the north side of this valley is the Book Cliffs, one of the longest continuous cliff faces in the world, stretching over 200 miles…

Colton, just a few miles back along the tracks, was once one of the most important railroad junctions in eastern Utah.

You're driving through the heart of what gave Carbon County its name. The coal seams exposed in these hillsides fueled Utah's industrial economy for over a century.

The town's name is literal. Starting in the 1880s, trains heading east toward Soldier Summit couldn't make the steep grade alone.

Price sits on one of the densest concentrations of Jurassic dinosaur bones ever discovered.

Wellington sits at the edge of one of North America's most significant fossil zones.

Green River sits at one of the few places where you can cross the Green River for over a hundred miles in either direction.

Thompson Springs once had a population over two hundred when it served as the primary highway stop for travelers heading south to Moab.

The valley you're descending into exists because of salt.

The bridge you're about to cross spans a river that has been cutting downward for roughly six million years, carving through two thousand feet of rock to expose layers…

The sandstone towers rising ahead of you are not random boulders. They are the remnants of a process that has been running for millions of years.