National parks are some of Utah's enduring beauties

SALT LAKE CITY — Utah has a total of 10 national parks/monuments and recreation areas, and these national areas have a long history that has been documented in the archives of the Deseret News.

For example, on June 4, 1964, the News reported on the fall of a landmark in Bryce Canyon National Park — Oastler's Castle, a natural bridge about a half-mile northwest of Tower Bridge. The formation probably collapsed in the spring of 1964. It is all but unknown today, though it was famous on postcards of decades past.

Other old Bryce formations — such as "Stone Tree" and "Bust of Abraham Lincoln" — also collapsed years ago and no longer exist, thanks to relentless weathering of the landscape there.

Bryce has also been a special attraction for foreign tourists and a story on Aug. 25, 1980, in the Deseret News outlined that.

Flooding along the Virgin River in the summer of 1961, when five people drowned, also stressed the first strong efforts to safeguard the Narrows at Zion National Park.

A Deseret News story on Sept. 8, 1965, stated, "Under certain conditions, entering the Narrows is the nearest thing to Russian Roulette." That was the aftermath of 42 hikers escaping danger from flash flooding and being trapped for several days in the Narrows.

By Sept. 22, 1965, hikers were finally being urged to resister at Zion Park when hiking the Narrows or any nearby wilderness hike.

The famous existing Zion Lodge has also had its share of disasters and is by no means the original building. The lodge burned to nothing but ruins on Jan. 28, 1966, destroying the kitchen, lobby, dining room, cafeteria, dance hall, gift shop and more — $350,000 in estimated damages. (A new Zion Lodge reopened in mid-June of 1966.)

The Deseret News also outlined the first time the northwest face of the Great White Throne, 2,400 feet of sheer rock, was climbed by three men, in a report on May 8, 1967.

Think the Zion Kolob scenic drive off I-15 has always been there? According to the Sept. 29, 1972, edition of the Deseret News, the road opened officially that fall.

Although buses weren't mandatory transportation at Zion until 1997, a Deseret News headline two decades earlier, on June 29, 1977, read, "Traffic ban at Zion?" and advocated the use of buses there.

Reporter Maxine Martz described Canyonlands as a "journey to the edge of time" in 1968.