Nature
Cataract Canyon is a 46-mile stretch of the Colorado River in southern Utah, carved through uplifted Colorado Plateau rocks and partly submerged when Lake Powell is high. Long before Euro-American exploration, people lived in the wider Canyonlands region, and the canyon preserves rock art and ruins at least 800 years old. Its recorded exploration began with fur trapper Denis Julien in 1836 and gained wider notice through John Wesley Powell’s 1869 expedition, which named it for its violent rapids. Later river runners and, after World War II, rubber rafts helped establish it as a major rafting run, renowned for powerful whitewater, especially the Big Drops.
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Halls Crossing, Utah · United States
