Park Avenue Trail

Hike the Park Avenue Trail in Arches National Park

The towering sandstone monoliths you see on this trail are reminiscent of the buildings along Park Avenue in New York City.

This easy hike is a great way to get out of the car and go for an easy walk among towering sandstone “skyscrapers.” The trail begins on a concrete sidewalk going to the Park Avenue viewpoint. From the viewpoint, the well-marked trail drops down a hill into a streambed, which is the trail for the rest of the hike.

Not all of the spires, pinnacles, and walls along this hike are named, but several are, including Courthouse Towers, Queen Nefertiti, the Three Gossips, Queen Victoria Rock, the Tower of Babel, and the Organ. These features are also visible from the road, but only by walking down the Park Avenue Trail can you get the experience of that famous street in New York City.

This is also a hike where paying attention to details pays off. About a half-mile in, look closely at the solid sandstone creekbed for bands of color that have been fractured and offset just a couple of inches. These tiny fractures and miniature offsets mirror much larger faults and fractures that can be displaced hundreds of feet at the landscape scale. Also keep your eyes peeled for a boulder in the middle of the streambed with a surface covered with pockets, swirls, and twisted bumps. Like all the sandstone here, this is petrified sand, but most likely in this case, water roiled a pocket of the sand and the disturbed particles were cemented in place many millions of years ago. The trail ends at the Courthouse Towers viewpoint. Unless you have set up a shuttle, return the way you came.

Directions

From Moab, drive north on U.S. Highway 191 about 5 miles to the entrance for Arches National Park, then drive 2.5 miles to the trailhead, which is on the left side of the road.