Shafer Canyon Overlook

Shafer Canyon Overlook is a roadside viewpoint in Island in the Sky, looking into the canyon and down the switchbacks of Shafer Trail. The road hugs the canyon wall as it drops 1,400 feet and provides access to the 100-mile White Rim Road. It is a useful stop for seeing how the mesa connects to the backcountry; the road below is a separate outing from the overlook itself. The wayside panel is worth a pause too, since it explains both the rock layers and the route.

For a photo, keep the pale road in the frame as it bends across the canyon wall. It gives the cliffs scale and makes the route visible in a way a frame filled only with rock would not.

The dark, glossy streaks on the desert rock are varnish formed by manganese and iron. At the foot of the Wingate cliffs, the Chinle Formation includes sandstone and siltstone laid down by water, plus volcanic ash carried by wind; uranium was later mined from this layer. The Wingate cliffs themselves were built from ancient desert dunes and can reach 500 feet.

Look for the thinner bands in the Kayenta Formation, deposited by streams; erosion can expose dinosaur tracks in its ledges. Higher Navajo Sandstone preserves cross-bedding from old dunes, while vertical cracks called joints guide water, ice and roots as they break the rock apart.

Indigenous people likely used this route to travel from the mesa toward the Colorado River. Ranchers drove livestock down it in the early 1900s, when the narrow track was rough enough that animals sometimes fell. During the 1950s uranium boom, the road was upgraded for trucks hauling ore and mining equipment. Canyonlands National Park was established in 1964, ending the route's ranching and mining era; backcountry travelers still use it today.

The canyon's shaded spring supports Douglas fir, remnants of a much cooler, wetter climate. On drier ground, pinyon and Utah juniper form the park's slow-growing pygmy forest, taking root wherever a crack holds water. The panel connects those trees to the same forces that shape the cliffs: shade, water and the slow work of erosion.