Ayres Natural Bridge Park

Few emigrants saw the arch; reaching it meant climbing down canyon walls and forcing through brush until a road came in the early 1900s. Matthew Field, a New Orleans reporter riding with Sir William Drummond Stewart, got there on July 13, 1843, and called the water Bridge Creek. William Clayton's 1847 diary describes a tunnel, which shows he never went. Isaac Starr rode beneath it on horseback in 1850. Alvah Ayres won a patent on the land in 1910, and his son gave it to Converse County in 1919.

Where it stands

More markers nearby

• Little Box Elder Creek — 1.1 mi
• Oregon Trail — 2.4 mi
• Bill Hooker — 7.1 mi
• The One Mile Hog Ranch — 7.5 mi