Wolfe Ranch

A crippled Union veteran homesteaded the ground thousands now cross to reach Delicate Arch. John Wesley Wolfe took a leg wound at Vicksburg that never healed, and in 1898, nearly seventy, he came to Salt Wash for the dry air. With his son Fred he built a herd past a thousand head, on grass that no longer grows here. His daughter arrived in 1906, appalled at the squalor, and made them build the one-room cabin that still stands. She also took one of the earliest photographs of the arch above — the one everyone now hikes to see.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Arches National Park — 3.9 mi
  Over 2,000 natural stone arches in one extraordinary landscape
• Big Bend Recreation Area — 6.3 mi
  A lazy loop of the Colorado with a sandy beach, riverside camping, and a well-known bouldering field
• Grandstaff Canyon — 8.8 mi
  A shaded creek-bottom walk to Morning Glory, the sixth-longest natural rock span in the country
• Onion Creek — 8.9 mi
  A scenic backroad that fords the same creek more than two dozen times beneath the spires of Fisher Towers

More markers nearby

• Dr. J.W. Williams — 9.9 mi
• Bates E. Wilson — 9.9 mi
• Elk Mountain Mission — 11 mi
• Early LDS Church — 11 mi