During the night of August 4, 2008, Utah lost a popular giant when Wall Arch, a prominent arch along the Devils Garden Trail in Arches National Park, collapsed.
While not the largest or most famous arch in the park, Wall Arch was still a favorite due to its proximity to Landscape Arch along the always-busy trail. With a measured span of 55 feet, it was ranked as 12th largest in the park (some publications and Web sites give the span as 71 feet – this is actually the “breadth”, a dimension that is not useful for comparing arches).
While no arch lasts forever, it is still extremely rare to see such a dramatic example of “geology in action.” We do not have a good geologic tool for dating arch formation, but we are sure that Wall Arch had stood nearly unchanged for hundreds, and probably thousands of years.
Geologic Information: The sandstone layer in which the pinnacles, pillars, arches, and knobs of Fantasy Canyon are formed consists of ancient river channel sediments. The underlying and overlying rock layers sandwiching the sandstone layer, and creating scenic badland topography around the canyon, are finer grained floodplain deposits.
Geologic Information: The area around Cascade Springs is underlain by coarse-grained glacial sediment deposited when glaciers covered high elevations of the Wasatch Range approximately 30,000 to 10,000 years ago.
GEOLOGIC MAP OF THE WHITE CANYON–GOOD HOPE BAY AREA, GLEN CANYON NATIONAL RECREATION AREA, SAN JUAN AND GARFIELD COUNTIES, UTAH
Interim Geologic Map of the Seep Ridge 30′ x 60′ Quadrangle, Uintah, Duchesne, and Carbon Counties, Utah, and Garfield and Rio Blanco Counties, Colorado 
FOSSIL ENVIRONMENTS IN UTAH
Through the use of computers and the Internet, and virtual globes such as Google Earth, we now have a way around the inherent limitations of depicting the third dimension on a standard paper geologic map. To help users gain this 3-D advantage, the UGS created an overlay of the new geologic map of the St. George 30′ x 60′ quadrangle in southwest Utah. This 3-D visualization brings the map to life, dramatically showing the relationship between geology and topography. A virtual field trip for the St. George 30′ x 60′ quadrangle, which uses placemarks to highlight selected geologic features, was also created.
