Bates E. Wilson

When Bates Wilson took charge of Arches in 1949, it had no paved road, no campground, not even a marked trail. He spent fifteen years driving and mapping the unknown canyon country west of Moab — in ten years of exploring, he and his son met only five other people out there. His trick was hospitality: jeep tours that ended in dutch-oven dinners over a campfire, a method Moab still calls dutch-oven diplomacy. It worked. Canyonlands was signed into law in 1964, a quarter-million acres, and Wilson, its first superintendent, became the father of it.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Corona Arch Trail — 2.5 mi
  A massive arch you can hike to without a national park fee
• Potash Road Dinosaur Tracks — 4.2 mi
  Dinosaur footprints embedded in a cliff face along the Colorado River
• Grandstaff Canyon — 4.7 mi
  A shaded creek-bottom walk to Morning Glory, the sixth-longest natural rock span in the country
• Moab — 4.8 mi
  The adventure capital of the American Southwest

More markers nearby

• Dr. J.W. Williams — steps away
• Moab Veterans Memorial — 4.9 mi
• Early LDS Church — 4.9 mi
• Elk Mountain Mission — 4.9 mi