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A Park Hub Field Guide

Lat 38.6166° N
Long 109.6198° W

Elevation4,085 – 5,653 ft

Utah · Stamp 08 / 63

Arches

National Park · Established 1971

Two thousand stone arches in a red desert, every one of them mid-collapse. Go while they stand.

Area76,679 acres

TrailheadMoab, Utah

Visitors1.5M / yr

Scroll to begin the ascent

Live · Park open 24 hrs No timed entry in 2026 · arrive early or late 1 active alert 98°F · dry heat Live layer, from the National Park Service

Best windowApr–May, Sep–Oct · summer runs 100°F+ Getting there5 min from Moab · 3.75 hr from Salt Lake City Fee$30 / vehicle · 7 days

★★★★★ 4.9 from 15 travelers 2 visitor stories 1.5M annual visitors Grounded in live NPS data

Arches · Mile 01 · The Story

Stone that learned
to let go slowly.

Everything you see in this park is a demolition in progress. Water gets into the sandstone, freezes, pries. Salt beds shift underneath and crack the rock into parallel fins. Wind and gravity finish the argument. Once in a very long while, the middle of a fin falls out and the rest refuses to follow, and the desert is left holding a doorway open onto nothing. Do that for a hundred million years and you get more than two thousand arches in one small park, the densest collection on the planet.

Edward Abbey spent two seasons here as a young ranger in the 1950s, living in a trailer near Balanced Rock, and opened the book it produced with a line the park has never shaken: this is the most beautiful place on earth. He meant the silence as much as the stone. Even now, with Moab five minutes from the gate, you can walk twenty minutes past any trailhead and have the red country mostly to yourself.

The arches are temporary. Wall Arch stood for centuries of photographs and fell on an August night in 2008 with nobody watching. That is the honest pitch for this park: it is a gallery where the exhibits quietly close forever, one by one. Read the story, check the live data above, go see them standing, and when you leave, collect the stamp.

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“

This is the most beautiful place on earth. There are many such places. Every man, every woman, carries in heart and mind the image of the ideal place, the right place, the one true home, known or unknown, actual or visionary.

Edward Abbey · Desert Solitaire, written from his ranger seasons at Arches

Double Arch · Storm Light

"May your trails be crooked, winding, lonesome, dangerous, leading to the most amazing view."

Edward Abbey

Arches · Mile 02 · The Essentials

Best Things to Do in Arches

Six ways in, from a windshield tour of the big formations to a permit-only maze of stone fins.

See

Delicate Arch at sunset

The freestanding arch on every Utah license plate, glowing rust-red in the last hour of light. Earn it on foot; the trail is the price of the postcard.

The signature experience

The Windows at sunrise

Four huge arches around one parking lot, lit up before most of the park is awake. The best view-per-step ratio anywhere in Utah.

Everyone · 1 hr

Drive

Arches Scenic Drive

Eighteen paved miles past Park Avenue, Balanced Rock, and the fins, with pullouts at every jaw-drop. The park works even from a car seat.

Casual · hot afternoons

Explore

Fiery Furnace

A ranger-led or permit-only maze of slots and fins with no marked trail. The coolest air and the fewest people in the park.

Adventurers · book ahead

Camp

Devils Garden Campground

The only campground inside the park, tucked among the fins at the road's end. Books out months ahead on Recreation.gov.

Campers · book early

See

Stars over Balanced Rock

Arches is an International Dark Sky Park, and the entrance never closes. Drive back in after dinner in Moab and look up.

Night owls · free

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Free AI Trip Planner

Plan Your Arches Trip

Answer a few questions right here — we'll map your day, stop by stop, with a route, timings, weather, and a packing checklist grounded in real park data. No account, no leaving this page.

Free preview · no card required

When the Crowds ComeMonthly visitors · tap a year

Illustrative shape · wires to official NPS visitation stats · summer peaks shown in gold

The Fins · Devils Garden

"Wilderness is not a luxury but a necessity of the human spirit."

Edward Abbey · Desert Solitaire

Arches · Mile 03 · Trails & Viewpoints

Best Hikes in Arches, by Difficulty

Every trail rated honestly, with distance, climb, and no shade worth mentioning: carry water for every mile.

The Windows Loop

Easy

1 mi+150 ft~1 hr

North Window, South Window, and Turret Arch off one gentle loop. Take the primitive path back for the same arches with none of the crowd. No permit.

Double Arch

Easy

0.6 mi+30 ft~30 min

A flat sandy stroll to two giant arches sharing one foot, the tallest opening in the park. Kids can scramble the lower slickrock. No permit.

Park Avenue

Easy–Mod

2 mi-320 ft~1.5 hr

Down into a corridor of stone skyscrapers, best in the first hour of light. One-way with a car shuttle, or double back for the uphill. No permit.

Landscape Arch

Easy–Mod

1.9 mi+250 ft~1.5 hr

A gravel path in Devils Garden to a 306-foot ribbon of rock, the longest arch span in North America, and visibly on borrowed time. No permit.

Delicate Arch

Mod–Strenuous

3 mi+480 ft2–3 hr

Open slickrock the whole way up, no shade, and a ledge finish that delivers the arch all at once. Carry a liter per person minimum, more in summer. No permit.

Devils Garden (Primitive Loop)

Strenuous

7.9 mi+1,100 ft4–6 hr

Eight arches, slickrock fins to walk along, and route-finding on the primitive half. The best full day in the park for confident hikers. No permit.

Reservations via Recreation.gov · Fiery Furnace permits & ranger hikes, Devils Garden Campground · no timed entry in 2026

Arches National Park at a Glance

1 Arches Visitor Center

2 Park Avenue Trailhead

3 Balanced Rock

4 The Windows · Double Arch

5 Wolfe Ranch · Delicate Arch

6 Devils Garden Trailhead

Stops shown in visit order. Build a plan above and this map updates to your exact stops.

Arches · Mile 04 · Life Between the Fins

Wildlife in Arches: Animals You Might See

Tap any animal to learn its story. Soon, the app will let you log what you spot and keep a life list for every park.

They work the green ribbons of Courthouse Wash while the day is still cool, then vanish into the shade. The park is theirs at the hours it is least yours.

Rebuilt here from nearby herds after vanishing in the 1900s. Scan the talus below the cliffs along the entrance road; if a boulder moves, it is probably a bighorn.

A house cat-sized fox with radar-dish ears, hunting kangaroo rats in the dark. Almost nobody sees one, which is exactly why spotting a kit fox becomes the story you tell for years.

Smart enough to unzip packs and patient enough to wait for you to walk away from yours. Every parking lot has a resident; assume it is running a con.

Dives at over 240 mph off the sandstone towers. Some cliff areas close in spring to protect nesting pairs, which is the best possible reason to be told a wall is off-limits.

The little white-striped sprinter that crosses the trail at noon when everything else is hiding. It shades itself with its own tail, which is either genius or showing off.

A foot of turquoise and yellow doing push-ups on a hot rock. When it runs, it can sprint on its hind legs like a tiny dinosaur, which is exactly what it looks like.

Spends most of the year buried, then erupts by the hundreds when summer thunderstorms fill the potholes. The pools are nurseries; look, but never touch the water.

The unhurried black beetle on every trail, famous for standing on its head when alarmed. It can go a lifetime without drinking, pulling water from the food it eats.

Plant Life in Arches: What Grows Here

Twisted, half-dead-looking, and quietly ancient. Junipers here live for centuries by shutting down whole branches in drought. The blue "berries" are actually tiny cones.

The other half of the pygmy forest that covers the high desert. Pinyon nuts fed people here for thousands of years, and the scent of the resin on a hot day is pure canyon country.

Flat-padded and patient, then suddenly extravagant: neon pink and yellow blooms in late spring. The fruit feeds everything from squirrels to bighorn.

A clump of spiny barrels that vanishes into the rock until April, when it ignites in cup-shaped scarlet flowers you can spot from fifty yards.

The big green trees tracing Courthouse Wash. Desert travelers once steered by cottonwoods because they only grow where there is water underneath.

The black, crusty ground between plants is alive: a skin of cyanobacteria, lichens, and mosses that holds the desert together. One footprint can take decades to heal. Stay on trail or on bare rock.

Fun Facts About Arches

Fact 01

More than 2,000 cataloged arches stand inside these 76,679 acres, the densest concentration of natural stone arches anywhere on earth.

Fact 02

Landscape Arch spans 306 feet, the longest in North America. In 1991 a 60-foot slab peeled off it while hikers watched; the trail beneath has been closed ever since.

Fact 03

Delicate Arch is on the Utah license plate, the state quarter, and half the postcards in Moab. The 46-foot arch stands entirely alone on the lip of a sandstone bowl.

Fact 04

Edward Abbey worked here as a seasonal ranger in 1956 and 1957. The journals he kept became Desert Solitaire, one of the most influential books ever written about the American desert.

Arches · Provisions

Gear for this parkvia AvantLink

Sun hoodie (no shade)REI

3L hydration packOsprey

Grippy approach shoesBackcountry

Stay nearbyvia Hipcamp

Riverside sites, Moab
Cottonwood shade on the Colorado, ten minutes from the entrance, from $29 a night.

Free Arches checklistdigital · $0

The printable trail and packing checklist in the field-guide style. Take it, join the trail list.

Arches · Mile 05 · From the Field Journal

Go Deeper on Arches

Stories, guides, and hard-won tips from the trail. The full Arches deep dive lives on the journal.

Trail Guide

★ArchesPark Hub · Collected

Your passport

One stamp,
one story.

Log the visit, keep your story, and watch the map of all sixty-three fill in behind you. Every stamp has a keepsake worth holding.

Arches · Mile 06 · Where to Next

Keep the Journey Going

Next park

Bryce Canyon

Four hours west on the Mighty 5 road: from stone doorways to an amphitheater of hoodoos.

Open Stamp 05 → The collection

All 63 Parks

See the full map and track every stamp you have earned.

View the map → Plan

Build a Trip

Turn Arches into a road trip with a custom, day-by-day itinerary.

Start planning → Go deeper

The Arches Deep Dive

The long-form guide: every trail, season, and secret, on the journal.

Read it →

Carry the field guide

Offline maps, your passport, and every park in your pocket on the trail.

The Book

Keepsake

The Park Hub field guide

The printed edition, part atlas, part journal, one story per park.

The Shop

Prints · pins · passport

Take Arches home

Field-guide posters, enamel stamps, and the passport book to fill in.

Fifty-five parks remain

"The parks do not belong to one state or to one section... they belong as much to the man of Massachusetts, of Michigan, of Florida, as they do to the people of California, of Wyoming, and of Arizona."

Stephen Mather · first director of the National Park Service

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