Rainbow Bridge Lake Powell

Rainbow bridge is the biggest natural bridge on the planet. Its massive 270 feet wide stance and 290-foot height make it almost as long as a football field both ways. Rainbow Bridge is visited all year by about 300,000 people. Many people approach Rainbow Bridge from Lake Powell via boat tour or private boat followed by a short hike to Rainbow Bridge. Many others prefer to hike or horseback in from the Navajo Indian Reservation over a 14-mile trail from the Navajo Mountain Trading Post or a 13-mile trail from the now deserted Rainbow Lodge. Daily tours from both the Bullfrog and the Wahweap Marinas are available.

Navajo tradition includes many references to Rainbow Bridge in the oral and written archives. It was believed that Rainbow Bridge was actually two petrified rainbows in a pure union, one male and the other female. It was said to be the birthplace of the rain and cloud people. Rainbow Bridge used to be one of the most difficult natural bridges to get to. After the flooding of Glen Canyon to create Lake Powell, suddenly it was much easier to visit. In pre-Lake Powell times, Navajo chanters would travel the extreme distance to Rainbow Bridge to perform ceremonies asking for rain and to leave gifts to the Holy People, who were their gods.

In the late 1800s, thousands and thousands of Navajo people were taken from the land of the Rainbow Bridge and marched 300 miles to a place they called Hweeldi, which means land of suffering. Navajo call this journey “The Long Walk.” Of the few Navajo left on their homeland, six medicine men united at Navajo Mountain overlooking Rainbow Bridge. They sent a prayer through Rainbow Bridge to be released from Hweeldi. After a total of four years of suffering at Hweeldi, the 4,500 remaining Navajo people were given back their lands and sent home. The Navajo people hold Rainbow Bridge to be very sacred as a birthplace of those who bring the rains, but also as the place where their prayers were answered for the Navajo people to return home.

Today at Rainbow Bridge there stands a sign asking the many visitors not to approach or walk beneath the Rainbow Bridge out of respect for this spiritual place.