Capital Reef Farm Horse and Gifford Barn

Capital Reef Farm Horse and Barn Digitally painted, Created from Scratch on a Blank Canvas by Bob Johnston. The Barn is located at the Gifford Farm... more

by Bob and Nadine Johnston

Title

Capital Reef Farm Horse and Gifford Barn

Artist

Bob and Nadine Johnston

Medium

Painting - Digital Created From Scratch On A Blank Canvas - Save A Bundle On 10 Or 25 Gift/note Cards... @ Our Cost

Description

Capital Reef Farm Horse and Barn Digitally painted, Created from Scratch on a Blank Canvas by Bob Johnston. The Barn is located at the Gifford Farm or Orchard in the Valley of Capitol Reef National Park.

Early settlers planted the orchards as a cash crop and for subsistence. No more than ten families lived in Fruita at any one time, and the last residents moved away in 1969. Today, the orchards are preserved and protected as part of the Fruita Rural Historic Landscape listed on the National Register of Historic Places. The orchards contain approximately 3,100 trees including cherry, apricot, peach, pear, apple, plum, mulberry, almond, and walnut.

The National Park Service now maintains the orchards year round with historic cultural irrigation practices, pruning, mowing, pest management, planting, mapping, and grafting.
Capitol Reef encompasses Waterpocket Fold, a Feature in the earth's crust that is 65 million years old. It is the largest exposed monocline in North America. In this fold, newer and older layers of earth folded over each other in an S-shape. Probably caused by the colliding continental plates that created the Rocky Mountains, it has been weathered and eroded to expose layers of rock and fossils. The park is filled with beautiful colored sandstone cliffs, white domes, and contrasting layers of stone and earth.

The area was named for the line of domes and cliffs of Navajo Sandstone, which reminded early explorers and settlers of the United States Capitol building, the cliffs go from the Fremont River to Pleasant Creek on the Waterpocket Fold.

The fold forms a north-to-south barrier that even today has barely been breached by roads. Early settlers referred to parallel, impassable ridges as "reefs", from which the park gets the second half of its name. The first paved road was not constructed through the area until 1962. Today, State Route 24 cuts through the park traveling east and west between Canyonlands National Park and Bryce Canyon National Park, but few other paved roads invade the rugged landscape.

The park is filled with canyons, cliffs, towers, domes, and arches. The Fremont River cut canyons through the Waterpocket Fold, but most of the park is arid desert country. A scenic drive shows park visitors some of the highlights, but it runs only a few miles from the main highway. Hundreds of miles of trails and unpaved roads lead the more adventurous into the equally scenic backcountry.
History....

Uploaded

September 25th, 2014