“ Endless outflung bastions and buttresses, supporting towers, parapets and craggy spires, parade from the rim down into the painted abyss where, dotted by the green of pines, red, orange, yellow, purple and white are banded and splashed in a symphony of color literally unbelievable till the eyes confirm.
Bryce Canyon also is an amphitheatre, a richer, more compacted bit of resplendence. You hardly believe that Bryce Canyon exists until you have gazed many times; so amazing is its beauty that it seems like the flashing vision of a dream. ”

“ In places the walls are topped with creamy white and the green of pines. Everywhere they exhibit a wizardry of massive sculpture. The deep-set river is bordered with the verdure of cottonwoods, box-elders, pines, ferns and flowering shrubs; in mossy caves curtained by little waterfalls, deer cradle their fawns. The radiance of the morning and evening sun upon the tinted towers of Zion is among the finest of its spectacles. ”

“ The Watchman, Zion National Park
It is a mysterious land of purple sage and empurpled distances, of incredible color, of sun-magic and the wizardry of wind and water. It is a place to drink in beauty, to form new conceptions of the divine.
Geologists recognize three subdivisions of the region from north to south: the High Plateaus; the Terraced Plateaus; the Grand Canyon Platform. From Cedar Breaks on the High Plateau it is more than 100 miles to Bright Angel Point on Grand Canyon’s rim; from Hurricane Ledge on the west, eastward to the Colorado River is more than 100 miles. ”

“ A short distance farther up the gorge soars a slender, ethereal cone of pink and 19 white, a peak of such appealing symmetry and delicate tints, so lofty and aspiring, that it evokes a cry of admiration. It is the Mountain of Mystery.
One of the Amphitheatres of Cedar Breaks
The Wet Trail
The Canyon continues some eight miles farther, but its exploration is only for the adventurous few. There is no trail but the winding river which reaches from wall to wall; sudden rainstorms send between the scarred and splintered cliffs a resistless torrent of water. ”

“ A row of towers half a mile high is quarried out of the palisade and stands well advanced from its face. There is an eloquence to their forms which stirs the imagination with singular power and kindles in the mind of the dullest observer a glowing response. ”

“ It is something heretofore unknown and unsuspected in scenery—a miracle of erosion, a peerless fantasy of color. From its depths, in pairs, in groups, in clusters, in hosts and in myriads, leap to the eyes the most amazingly bizarre forms, slender, dainty, bulky, grotesque—a bewildering combination of heaven and hell in which the angelic easily predominates. ”

“ And these dream-tissue cities in the realm of muted mystery have weird inhabitants statued in variegated stone: giants and gnomes, popes and queens, kneeling penitents, companies of marching soldiers, gargoyles, fauns, satyrs, nymphs, witches, horses, dogs, lizards, frogs and turtles—figures that seem to move, sway and posture in the flashing play of light and shadow. The least vivid imagination needs a checkrein. ”

“ Directly in front of us a complex group of white towers, springing from a central pile, mounts upward to the clouds. Out of their midst, and high over all, rises a dome-like mass which dominates the entire landscape. It is almost pure white, with brilliant streaks of carmine descending its vertical walls. At the summit it is truncated and a flat tablet is laid upon the top, showing its edge of deep red. ”

“ It is actually a vast plateau, some fifty miles long and thirty-five miles wide, and containing 500 square miles of yellow pine, fir and spruce diversified by charming aspen copses, the largest and most beautiful virgin forest in the United States. In elevation it rises from 7,500 to 9,300 feet above sea level.
Kaibab Forest occupies the top of a lofty plateau isolated on the south and east by the Grand Canyon, on the north and west by the mysterious plains above which it rises 5,000 feet. On all sides are unexplored plateaus and canyons where untouched cliff dwellings stand. ”

“ Cedar City to Zion National Park
The highway southward from Cedar City (the Zion Park Highway) is on the floor of an arm of prehistoric Lake Bonneville. This is the Great Basin region, a sort of prison for running water because none of its streams ever reach the sea. In the east are the steep scarps of the Markagunt and Kolob Plateaus limited by a tremendous fault plane, the Hurricane Ledge; in the west are the Iron Mountains, veritable masses of iron ore; in the south are the lofty, majestic Pine Valley Mountains, extinct volcanoes whose dark, wrinkled summits exceed 10,000 feet in elevation. ”

“ Two weeks special vacation tours of Zion National Park, Cedar Breaks, Bryce Canyon National Monument and Colorado will leave Chicago every Saturday commencing June 20th and continuing through the season. These tours are at moderate cost, are escorted by a courteous, well-informed travel representative who relieves you of all the details by arranging for tickets, sleeping car and hotel reservations, automobile transportation, baggage transfers, sight-seeing guides, side-trips, etc., leaving you free to sit back, relax, and enjoy every minute of your vacation. ”

“ About a mile beyond is Bridge Mountain upon whose upper slope may be discerned a great bow of stone, a natural bridge with a span of 100 feet. Among the Towers of the Virgin stands the Altar of Sacrifice, a buttressed white fane whose summit and wall are stained deep with flowing crimson, suggesting the bloody sacrificial place of some insatiable pagan god. The East Temple, on the right, is a splendid structure of pink and white surmounted by a carmine capstone.
On the left is the Streaked Wall bearing strange white cones, and beyond it is Sentinel Peak. ”

“ The climate in Zion National Park is mild throughout the season. At Bryce Canyon and Cedar Breaks, farther north and at higher elevations, cool weather may be expected at night both early and late in the season. In the Kaibab Forest and at the North Rim of Grand Canyon, cool nights are to be expected.
Southern Utah and Northern Arizona are regions of clear, dry, sunny days, delightfully exhilarating and followed by refreshing nights. ”

“ Cedar Breaks is a series of vast amphitheatres eroded to a depth of 2,000 feet into the Pink Cliff formation at the summit of the Markagunt Plateau and covering an area of approximately sixty square miles in the Sevier National Forest. Its forested rim, 10,300 feet in elevation, has been etched back into Blowhard Mountain and adjacent eminences; and a short distance to the north the blunted volcanic crest of Brian Head rises 900 feet higher, affording a panorama of practically all of southern Utah, Nevada and northern Arizona. ”

“ Measured by civilization’s yardstick, the unknown land in which they lie is a frontier, still in the pioneer stage of existence. It is not so long since the forts along the way actually repelled Indian attacks; it is not so far to fastnesses where cougars come forth to prey on deer, or to desert valleys where wild mustangs range. ”

“ Where one succeeds another, the uppermost presents sinuous cliff walls, hundreds of miles in length and superbly distinctive in color and carving. More than 10,000 feet of strata are exposed, “a library of the ages in vivid bindings” that contains the fossil remains of creatures since the morning of life on earth. ”

“ On the edge of the plains are ruins of primitive dwellings of which the modern Indian knows nothing; in many a secluded canyon are the more inscrutable habitations of the 6 cliff dwellers. The indomitable ranchers have built quaint, poplar-shaded villages with homes of adobe, and their farms are often fenced with stone. ”

“ Cedar City has a good hotel, water system, electric lights, a bank, photoplay theatre, well stocked stores, hospital, Carnegie Library, Mormon Tabernacle, a branch of the State Agricultural College, and a new and handsome railway station. On the edge of the town is a band of Piute Indians, the original inhabitants of the country, who sell buckskin gloves, moccasins and other articles. The prosperity of Cedar City is derived from sheep, wool, cattle, agriculture and the recent development of vast deposits of iron in the Iron Mountains, twelve miles away. ”

“ Cedar Breaks is twenty-three miles by highway east of Cedar City and four-fifths of a mile nearer the sky. Immediately east of the town the road enters the rugged gorge of Coal Creek, its slopes covered with fine forests of conifers and aspens. The walls assume impressive castellated forms that are especially striking at the mouth of Ashdown Gorge, eight miles distant. Ashdown Gorge is an extremely narrow, tortuous and precipitous rift in the plateau, down which rushes a sparkling stream from the vast furrows of Cedar Breaks. ”

“ The colors change marvelously in response to the sun; pink is dominant, though, at times, orange tones seem to prevail. In broad aspect the color scheme is pink, red, orange, yellow, white, lavender and purple, with intermediate tints and hues that would form a dictionary of pigments; and on the countless scalloped slopes appears the green of spruces, firs and pines. An artist has counted more than sixty tints in Cedar Breaks. ”

“ Special automobiles (six passenger touring cars) may be chartered for any scheduled tour, for exclusive use, on basis of $25.00 per day, or part thereof, over and above the regular automobile per capita fare (see pages 39 and 40) for each person for tour availed of: the minimum for such special service will be 5 full fares plus the $25.00 per day or part thereof. If there are more than six persons in party, an eleven passenger type of car, if desired and if circumstances permit, will be furnished on the same per capita basis, plus $25.00 per day or part thereof. ”

“ Outing clothes, including riding breeches, stout shoes and puttees, or boots, and serviceable gloves will add to the comfort of men and women who wish to ride horseback, tramp or climb. Bring your camera. ”

“ The Union Pacific System maintains in many of the principal cities of the United States, also in Toronto, Ont., representatives who will gladly assist in making advance reservations at the lodges and camps. ”