The Hickman Bridge Trail is the park's most direct walk to a natural bridge, climbing 400 feet in 0.9 mile from a lot on Highway 24 with parking for cars, a limited number of RVs, and a vault toilet. The moderate route passes the debris of a large 2013 rockfall, then a stream-cut span 133 feet across. Running water is what makes it a bridge rather than an arch. The Rim Overlook and Navajo Knobs trails begin at the same trailhead. The lot is also the park's named view of Capitol Dome, a white rock formation that gives the park half its name and only reads as a dome to eastbound drivers. Near here the highway crosses the central axis of the Waterpocket Fold, where the rock layers bend over a buried fault.
Hickman Bridge is a quarter mile on. Its lot is on your left. Look high on that same side for a pale rounded top. That's Capitol Dome, the rock this park is named for. It's no dome. It's a row of fins that blend together, and the shape only works heading east. The trail's nine tenths of a mile each way, four hundred feet of climbing, moderate, to a natural bridge one hundred thirty-three feet across and, by the park's count, one hundred twenty-five tall, cut by a stream. In March of two thousand thirteen several hundred tons of rock fell at this trailhead, and you walk past the pile. The name comes from Joseph Hickman, a school principal, and Boone has more on him. Somewhere in here you cross the axis of the Fold. The layers are draped over a buried fault like a carpet over a stair step, and that step is under you now.
Photo: NPS · Public domain (U.S. Government work)