Chimney Rock stands above Highway 24 as a tower of red Moenkopi under a hard pale cap, and its trailhead lot sits back from the road with restrooms. The Chimney Rock Loop is the park's sunset climb, a strenuous circuit of 3.6 miles that gains 590 feet and opens onto long views of the Fold. There's no water at the trailhead, so hikers carry their own. The canyon behind the rock has a much older history as a route through the Fold, recorded in the park's ethnographic study of the tribes tied to this country. That study challenges the old picture of the park as empty land and an obstacle. Sandstone quarried nearby went into the park's first ranger station, built by the Civilian Conservation Corps in 1940.
That red stack dead ahead, with the pale cap, is Chimney Rock. Its lot's first, on your left, set back from the road, with restrooms. Every settler story you'll hear calls the Fold a wall. The park's tribal study calls that a misconception, along with vacant wilderness, and it says that with all its water pockets, the Fold could be crossed anywhere. The canyon behind this rock was a corridor through the Fold. A road before there was a road.
Photo: Kent G. Budge / Wikimedia Commons · CC0