Utah’s Goblin Valley casts a hoodoo spell

It is a brief moment of cinematic celebrity for Goblin Valley State Park, a peculiar den of time in Emery County, Utah, that contains one of the world’s densest collections of hoodoos.

Located at the southeastern edge of the San Rafael Swell, down a paved road off Highway 24 between Hanksville and Green River, the sandstone, siltstone and shale formations abut red cliffs and resemble mammals, cartoon animals, furniture, abstract humans and even artist Jeff Koon’s “Play-Doh” sculpture. In one direction there might be the building-sized shape of a giant puppy overlooking the landscape. In another, smiling fish. The Three Sisters tower over the road to the Observation Point.

The much-adored park is on the Grand Circle Road Trip, which includes stops at Bryce Canyon, Zion National Park and Arches National Park. But while the Arches and other geological landmarks are the showcased headliners, well-publicized southwestern backdrops in decades of film and photography, Goblin Valley is still more like that little jazz club around the corner where something wildly unique and under the radar is happening.

The free-roaming and pet-friendly park offers miles of exploration up and down the hills and pathways through the giant hoodoos.

Wind, water and time, have sculpted formations that take on the likeness of portals, furniture or birds. A giant potato mounted on its siltstone base looks as otherworldly as the landscape in which it sits. That nature would sculpt the exact likeness of the starchy vegetable over millions of years is the type of random peculiarity that endears Goblin Valley State Park to its 300,000 annual visitors.

“It’s like an alien landscape,” James Wells, Goblin Valley’s park manager, said in summing up his first impression of Goblin Valley when he began there as a junior ranger in 2012. “It doesn’t look like anything on Earth.”

Wells is being literal here. In his research, he has found hoodoos slightly similar to those of Goblin Valley only in Bryce Canyon, somewhere in Kyrgyzstan, as well as clusters in nearby Little Egypt. But that similarity is not even all that similar. While Bryce Canyon’s pinnacle-shaped hoodoos jut upward as if a Gothic cathedral, the hoodoos of Goblin Valley are more awkward and clumsy, slouching and rounded, almost comical.

Goblin Valley’s story began 170 million years ago when an ancient inland sea covered part of what is now Northeast Utah, leaving behind sediments in its tidal flats that sunk into the mud.

Over time the deposits formed into rocks. When a tectonic shift uplifted the area, it pushed the rocks above ground where wind, water and time would erode the gritty silt and sandstone into their unusual top-heavy shapes.

Native tribes had lived in the area, leaving behind petroglyphs and other markings, but the early reports of Goblin Valley sightings among non-natives came from cowboys and, later, a businessman seeking better routes for his river ferry company.

By the 1950s the area had gained more attention and was designated as a Reserve to protect it from vandalism. It officially became Goblin Valley State Park on August 24, 1964.

The park now spreads across 3,654 acres of protected land at the edge of the San Rafael Swell within the Colorado Plateau, and includes Goblin Valley Campground with clean, well-maintained restrooms, RV hookups and rental yurts. Its remote location and distance from cities and traffic helped it become an officially designated Dark Sky Park, offering stunning views of the Milky Way.

Wells said that gates to the park are left open after it closes for night viewers and photographers arriving after sunset for the view that can be shocking to anyone living in light pollution, an experience as unforgettable as the goblins in the three valleys.

Occasional telescope programs and full moon hikes, as well as geology tours take place throughout the year, but the park is not event heavy. It’s more a peaceful location with fewer crowds than the other landmarks, and a campground with clean restrooms, yurt rentals and hookups is nestled right up along Wild Horse Butte. Visitors can sleep right next to the Wild Horse Butte Trail in the tall rocks and awaken to explore the hoodoos, cliffs, mountain bike trails, slot canyons and surrounding landmarks.

Intentional vandalism in the park is a concern, Wells says, but not common. The hoodoos are still forming, however, and park officials record their erosion. “It’s not as much as you’d think,” he said, adding that it would take at least 100 years to visibly notice change. “Baby goblins” also are forming from fallen rocks.

It was in October 2013, when Boy Scout leaders intentionally knocked over one of the hoodoos in a home video that gave Goblin Valley international headlines, rippling empathy mixed with outrage from visitors all over the world. Something that took millions of years to create was toppled in minutes. The park, its cliffs, goblins and mountains are that special to those who have experienced them.

As author Mark Milligan wrote in The Geology of Goblin Valley State Park, published in a 1991 geological survey, “To look at the rock layers in the park is to glimpse forces of nature that occurred about 145 to 170 million years ago, during the middle to latter part of the Jurassic Period on a geologic calendar.”

For that, and all the other opportunities Goblin Valley offers, Wells said, “You could spend a week out here and not run out of things to do.”