Delicate Arch is a 60 ft (18 m) natural rock sculpture. The Entrada Sandstone formation, of which it is part, was deposited between 180 and 140 million years ago as ergs (sand seas) in a desert environment near the epeiric Sundance Sea, an arm of what is now the Arctic Ocean. Its original sandstone fin was gradually worn away by weathering and erosion, leaving the arch. Though the most dramatic of the 2,000+ arches in the area, it was not part of what was initially designated as a national monument; the oversight was corrected in 1938 when it was enlarged and desinated a national park. James Gilluly and J. B. Reeside, Jr., described and named the formation in 1928, and the arch was formally named by Frank Beckwith in the winter of 1933-34. Before that local cowboys referred to it as "the Chaps" or "the Schoolmarm's Bloomers." (Chaps are leather garments worn by cowboys to protect their legs when riding through bushy terrain; they got their name from the Spanish "chaparreras," named after thick, thorny, low bushes known as chaparral. Bloomers were pantlike garments designed as an alternative to the restrictive, unhealthy dresses worn my 19th-century American women; they got their name from feminist Amelia Bloomer, who called it the "freedom dress" and adopted it as a symbol for women's rights.)
Delicate Arch is a 60 ft (18 m) natural rock sculpture. The Entrada Sandstone formation, of which it is part, was deposited between 180 and 140 million years ago as ergs (sand seas) in a desert environment near the epeiric Sundance Sea, an arm of what is now the Arctic Ocean. Its original sandstone fin was gradually worn away by weathering and erosion, leaving the arch. Though the most dramatic of the 2,000+ arches in the area, it was not part of what was initially designated as a national monument; the oversight was corrected in 1938 when it was enlarged and desinated a national park. James Gilluly and J. B. Reeside, Jr., described and named the formation in 1928, and the arch was formally named by Frank Beckwith in the winter of 1933-34. Before that local cowboys referred to it as "the Chaps" or "the Schoolmarm's Bloomers." (Chaps are leather garments worn by cowboys to protect their legs when riding through bushy terrain; they got their name from the Spanish "chaparreras," named after thick, thorny, low bushes known as chaparral. Bloomers were pantlike garments designed as an alternative to the restrictive, unhealthy dresses worn my 19th-century American women; they got their name from feminist Amelia Bloomer, who called it the "freedom dress" and adopted it as a symbol for women's rights.)
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