Blackwater Natural Bridge is a

natural arch A natural arch, natural bridge, or (less commonly) rock arch is a natural landform where an arch has formed with an opening underneath. Natural arches commonly form where inland cliffs, Cliffed coast, coastal cliffs, Fin (geology), fins or Stack ...

Shoshone National Forest Shoshone National Forest ( ) is the first federally protected National Forest in the United States and covers nearly in the state of Wyoming. Originally a part of the Yellowstone Timberland Reserve, the forest is managed by the United States ...

Wyoming Wyoming ( ) is a landlocked U.S. state, state in the Mountain states, Mountain West subregion of the Western United States, Western United States. It borders Montana to the north and northwest, South Dakota and Nebraska to the east, Idaho t ...

. The arch is located along a ridge at an elevation of and is a little over southwest of Coxcomb Mountain. Blackwater Natural Bridge is to the east of the headwaters of Blackwater Creek, which flows north to the North Fork Shoshone River. No official determination of the height or span of the arch has been completed and the estimated size of the arch varies greatly. The non-profit Natural Arch and Bridge Society states that the arch is anywhere from while other sources claim that it may be one of the largest in the world, with a span of , a height of and with rock thickness of the arch at . Blackwater Natural Bridge is in a remote region that is off trail but can be viewed after a round-trip hike depending on starting point from the Blackwater Natural Bridge trailhead located off of U.S. Routes 14/ 16/ 20. The trailhead is a drive from

Cody, Wyoming Cody is a city in and the county seat of Park County, Wyoming, United States. It is named after Buffalo Bill Cody for his part in the founding of Cody in 1896. The population was 10,028 at the United States Census, 2020, 2020 census, making Cod ...

. The trail also leads past the site of the Blackwater fire of 1937 where 15 firefighters were killed and another 38 injured, and is the worst loss of life of firefighters in the history of Wyoming and one of the worst in U.S. history.

References

Shoshone National Forest Landforms of Park County, Wyoming Natural arches of Wyoming {{Wyoming-geo-stub