In the Heat of Wayne Wonderland

A colorful bridge in Wayne County, Utah, I wanted to photograph was best reached from the little town of Fruita on the Freemont River. We followed this river, crossing it eight times in a single mile, then left it to cut back up a side canyon. One unfamiliar with the trails might look for days without finding the arch, so well concealed is Fruita Bridge.

Our guide assured me if it "was pictures I was after," I had a big job on my hands in getting a position where the sky would show through the arch for without this effect the ordinary picture would not show the bridge satisfactorily. "There's never been a good shot made of it yet," said he. But he had never learned how third-dimension photography simplifies that problem. My problem was not one of sky, but to scramble up a cliff in order to get a vantage point where the whole bridge would show. Again the guide objected; "Them rocks behind hide up the hole on a photograph." But in the stereograph, we find "them rocks behind" keep their proper places and stay there.

The rocks are brilliantly colored in reds, browns, buffs and purples, while most of the walls are marked with the dark brown and black streaking of desert varnish washed over the surface during infrequent rains. Fruita Bridge is 90 feet above the dry stream bed and arches over a span just twice as long. More than ninety per cent of the natural bridges in the world are found in Utah, and there are scores still unnamed and perhaps hundreds still undiscovered for the majority of these natural stone arches are in the wild, unfrequented areas of the southern part of the state.