Overview
A brief introduction to Arches National Park
Discover a landscape of contrasting colors, land forms, and textures unlike any other. The park has over 2,000 natural stone arches, hundreds of soaring pinnacles, massive rock fins, and giant balanced rocks. This red-rock wonderland will amaze you with its formations, refresh you with its trails, and inspire you with its sunsets.
Arches National Park is a national park of the United States in eastern Utah. The park is adjacent to the Colorado River, 4 mi (6 km) north of Moab, Utah. The park contains more than 2,000 natural sandstone arches, including the well-known Delicate Arch, which constitute the highest density of natural arches in the world. It also contains a variety of other unique geological resources and formations. The national park lies above an underground evaporite layer or salt bed, which is the main cause of the formation of the arches, spires, balanced rocks, sandstone fins, and eroded monoliths in the area.
The park consists of 310.31 km2 (76,680 acres; 119.81 sq mi; 31,031 ha) of high desert located on the Colorado Plateau. The highest elevation in the park is 5,653 ft (1,723 m) at Elephant Butte, and the lowest elevation is 4,085 ft (1,245 m) at the visitor center. The park receives an average of less than 10 in (250 mm) of rain annually.
Administered by the National Park Service, the area was originally named a national monument on April 12, 1929, and was redesignated as a national park on November 12, 1971. The park received more than 1.8 million visitors in 2021. From April 1 through October 31, a timed entry reservation is required to visit the park between the hours of 7 a.m. and 4 p.m.
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Scan for cancellationsContact Arches National Park
- Recreation.gov
- Booking site: https://www.recreation.gov
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Other nearby parks
Open to camping at other nearby parks? Here are a few other parks you'll find in the vicinity.
Reviews
Camper reviews for Arches National Park
Beautiful park along with island in the sky at Canyonlands
Very nice campground Desert Garden. Sites are paved not a bad spot with great views. Only drawbacks no hookups or dump station.
LOVED our visit to Arches
We spent 2 nights at Devils Garden Campground. The campground is relatively small, which was nice after some of the busier parks we had been to in Utah. I enjoyed that the grounds were located deep into the park. There is also a hiking trail located in the campground which makes for a wonderful evening/sunset hike. We went to the ranger talk one night which was a really cool dark skies discussion. Cons for me would be that very few spaces have shade, which is hard in the hot summer months. Also, there weren't tent-specific areas, so we were camped next to several RV's running their generators, at one point after quiet hours we had to go ask our neighbors to shut it down. The camp host was friendly and often roaming the grounds during the day and the restrooms had flush toilets and running water.
Arches overall is a great park, but you do need to drive between sights, so we stuck with some of the longer hikes which we prefer. I think the timed entry has helped with the traffic in the park because it wasn't nearly as bad as I had read before.
Had to have a certain date-- It works great!
I was planning a series of camp sites in a sequence. I needed a certain date in the middle of the journey to fit it together. I signed up for Campnab and I got notified within a couple of days. I had to be quick so I had all of my info ready to grab the site. It made for a wonderful trip.... Couldn't have done it without Campnab!
Primitive and beautiful
I used Campnab to score a coveted spot at Devils Garden Campground in Arches National Park in October 2022. The campground is small with primitive campsites, but what it lacks in hookups and amenities, it makes up for in views. I stayed in site 12, which is a pull-through site. I was within walking distance of the restrooms, dishwashing/water station, and, most importantly, the Devils Garden trailhead. My visit to this campground was the most relaxing camping experience I've had in years, and I can't wait to go back again one day soon.
Cool Campground
Fun campground to explore, but don't go in July! That was an amateur move!
Map
View a map of Arches National Park
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