Goblin Valley

I had first heard of Goblin Valley when I told my friend Evan that I was about to set off on a cross country road trip. It turns out that Goblin Valley is about 30 miles down 24 which the turnoff to from Highway 50 was not well marked at all. So essentially, this park is in the middle of nowhere.

It has started raining on and off when I got to Goblin Valley and started pouring soon after this shot was taken. I was torn between packing it in and trying to go catch the Delicate Arch in Arches National Park or staying in hopes of the sky clearing up. In the end, I chose to stay which turned out, I think, to be the right decision as the next pictures will show.

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The secluded Goblin Valley was first discovered by cowboys searching for cattle. Then in the late 1920s, Arthur Chaffin, owner/operator of the Hite Ferry, and two companions were searching for an alternate route between Green River and Caineville. They came to a vantage point about one mile (1.6 km) west of Goblin Valley and were awed by what they saw – five buttes and a valley of strange-shaped rock formations surrounded by a wall of eroded cliffs. In 1949 Chaffin returned to the area he called 'Mushroom Valley'. He spent several days exploring the mysterious valley and photographing its scores of intricately eroded rocks.

Publicity attracted visitors to the valley despite its remoteness. In 1954 it was proposed that Goblin Valley be protected from vandalism. The state of Utah later acquired the property and established Goblin Valley State Reserve. It was officially designated a state park on August 24, 1964.

Portions of the 1999 film Galaxy Quest were filmed in the park.

The grotesque stone shapes in Goblin Valley result from the weathering of Entrada Sandstone. They consist of debris eroded from former highlands and redeposited on a former tidal flat of alternating layers of sandstone, siltstone and shale. The rocks show evidence of being near an ancient sea with 1) the ebb and flow of tides, 2) tidal channels that directed currents back to the sea and 3) coastal sand dunes.

Joint or fracture patterns within the Entrada's sandstone beds created initial zones of weakness. The unweathered joints intersected to form sharp edges and corners with greater surface-area-to-volume ratios than the faces. As a result, the edges weathered more quickly, producing the spherical-shaped 'goblins'.

From Wikipedia