Arches National Park in eastern Utah preserves a high desert landscape along the Colorado Plateau with more than 2,000 natural sandstone arches, along with spires, balanced rocks, fins, windows, and monoliths. Its distinctive scenery formed over millions of years as buried salt beds shifted the overlying rock and erosion exposed and sculpted Entrada and Navajo sandstone into arches. The area has been inhabited since the end of the last ice age and later drew wider attention in the early twentieth century, leading to federal protection in 1929 and redesignation as a national park in 1971. Today it safeguards both remarkable geology and a fragile semiarid ecosystem.