Dark Angel is a natural sandstone rock formation in

Arches National Park Arches National Park is a national park in eastern Utah, United States. The park is adjacent to the Colorado River, north of Moab, Utah. More than 2,000 natural sandstone arches are located in the park, including the well-known Delicate Arch, a ...

, Utah. The formation rises 150 feet (45 m) above the salt valley and was named after the dark colored sandstone that makes up the pillar.

History

About 10,000 years ago, the

Ancestral Pueblo The Ancestral Puebloans, also known as the Anasazi, were an ancient Native American culture that spanned the present-day Four Corners region of the United States, comprising southeastern Utah, northeastern Arizona, northwestern New Mexico, ...

and

Fremont culture The Fremont culture or Fremont people is a pre-Columbian archaeological culture which received its name from the Fremont River in the U.S. state of Utah, where the culture's sites were discovered by local indigenous peoples like the Navajo and ...

settled in the region known today as the

Four Corners The Four Corners is a region of the Southwestern United States consisting of the southwestern corner of Colorado, southeastern corner of Utah, northeastern corner of Arizona, and northwestern corner of New Mexico. The Four Corners area ...

, cultivating certain plants such as

Yucca ''Yucca'' is a genus of perennial shrubs and trees in the family Asparagaceae, subfamily Agavoideae. Its 40–50 species are notable for their rosettes of evergreen, tough, sword-shaped leaves and large terminal panicles of white or whitish ...

. Around 700 years ago, in part due to climate change and colonization, the Fremont people began to migrate away from the region, followed afterwards with the Pueblo.

Petroglyphs A petroglyph is an image created by removing part of a rock surface by incising, picking, carving, or abrading, as a form of rock art. Outside North America, scholars often use terms such as "carving", "engraving", or other description ...

left by the culture can still be seen at the base of the formation.

Access

The formation can be accessed via a 2.34 mile hike by the Dark Angel Trail. The path leaves from the end of the

Devil's Garden In myrmecology and forest ecology, a devil's garden ( Kichwa: ''Supay chakra''Frederickson, M. E., & Gordon, D. (2007). The devil to pay: the cost of mutualism with '' Myrmelachista schumanni'' ants in 'devil's gardens' is increased herbivory o ...

Trail at a junction just south of Double O Arch. The pillar is also accessible by climbing, and was one of the first formations to be climbed in the park Dark Angel Rock Climbing, Mountainproject.com, July 28 2023, https://www.mountainproject.com/area/105717212/dark-angel

References

{{Utah-geo-stub Landforms of Grand County, Utah Rock formations of Utah