Wouldn’t it be cool to name a landmark after yourself or a loved one?
In the early decades of the 20th century, the communities of Southern Utah knew three impressive natural bridges in White Canyon by seemingly simple human names: the Augusta, the Caroline, and the Edwin.
These names, given in honor of loved ones, weren’t the first names given to the three wonders of nature–and they aren’t the names they’re known by today.
The Uninspired Original Names
In the 1870s and 1880s, the only individuals brave enough to enter the canyonlands of Southeast Utah were cowboys and prospectors.
Cass Hite, a prospector who made a meager living off placer mines in the Colorado River, is the first known individual to have wandered up White Canyon and found three expansive and majestic natural bridges.
Hite was undoubtedly impressed by the stone expanses. He decided to name them after individuals who certainly matched their beauty, grandeur, and inspirational quality: federal bureaucrats.
The natural bridges of White Canyon were first named President, Senator, and Congressman, a naming pattern that stems from the same type of imagination that dubbed a certain canyon in Arizona “Grand.”
The Names That Stuck
As a backcountry prospector scraping out a living in the canyons of the Colorado River, Cass Hite didn’t make much of his discovery. He brought little, if any attention to the creatively named geologic features he’d stumbled upon.
Decades after Hite, a cattleman named James Scorup guided Horace Long, an engineer, to the bridges. Either unaware or ambivalent of the names Cass Hite had already given them, Scorup and Long renamed the bridges after loved ones.
As they took in the sight of the first and largest bridge, they called it the Augusta, after Horace Long’s beloved wife. The second bridge, which spans the intersection of White and Armstrong Canyon, was named the Caroline, in honor of James Scorup’s mother.
Perhaps out of loved ones to commemorate, they called the third span the Little Bridge.
After returning from their expedition, an account of Horace Long’s journey was published in two magazines that were influential in the wilderness exploration community, the Century and National Geographic. Because of the popularity of these publications, the names they gave the spans became unofficially-official and were used widely throughout Southeast Utah.
Renaming the Little Bridge
Inspired by the magazine articles, members of the Commercial Club of Salt Lake City sponsored their own expedition to investigate White Canyon and the surrounding territory.
This expedition was led by Henry Culmer, a British painter and businessman. He intended to survey the canyons and mesas around White Canyon for their economic potential. He also aimed to create sketches of the Augusta, Caroline, and Little Bridge, which he would turn into full-scale romantic style paintings.
In his account of the expedition, which was published in National Geographic in 1907, Culmer described the Augusta Bridge as ranking “with the greatest natural wonders, and taking its place with Niagara, the Yellowstone geysers and the Grand Canyon in Arizona, as one of the masterpieces of American landscape.”
To this expedition, the name “Little Bridge” would surely have seemed like an insult to something so grand. They renamed it the Edwin Bridge, after a major sponsor of their expedition.
New Names for the National Monument
As the exceptional beauty and grandeur of the natural bridges of White Canyon became widely publicized, citizens of Utah began clamoring for their protection.
On April 16, 1908, the aggressively conservation-minded president Theodore Roosevelt happily obliged. Under the power of the 1906 Antiquities Act, he declared Natural Bridges National Monument, reserving a meager forty acres around each bridge from development (it was expanded by his successor, William Howard Taft).
With this proclamation, Natural Bridges National Monument became the first unit in the future pantheon of Utah’s national parks.
With the designation also came an official survey by the General Land Office, which did away with the honorifics that the bridges were known by.
To reflect the indigenous history of the region, Hopi names were selected that described the unique elements of each bridge. Because of its uniform curve and bowl-like chasm beneath, the Augusta Bridge became Sipapu, meaning “place of emergence.”
Inspired by pictographs resembling ceremonial Hopi masks, the Caroline Bridge was renamed Kachina. The Edwin Bridge was given the deserving name Owachomo, referring to a large rock outcropping on one side of the bridge.
Though it’s one of the most remote national park units in the state of Utah, visitors can view the natural bridges of White Canyon for themselves. The monument is located just south of Canyonlands National Park. All three bridges can be seen by hiking a nine-mile trail.
Perhaps, if you choose to make the trek to take in their splendor for yourself, they’ll inspire you to come up with names of your own.
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