Southern Appalachian Digital Collections

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Glimpses of our National Monuments

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  • wcu_great_smoky_mtns-10696.jpg
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  • OUR NATIONAL MONUMENTS 39 name. This is the most massive of the bridges; rough hewn, it gives an impression of great weight and strength. The huge fragments of rocks and piles of sand and gravel in the canyon in the immediate vicinity are in harmony with the bridge, as if the master workman, not yet having finished his work, had not thought it necessary to clear away the debris. This bridge has a span of 186 feet, a width of 49 feet, and a thickness of 107 feet at its smallest part. It rises to a height of 205 feet above the stream bed. About 2^2 miles above the Kachina in White Canyon is the Sipapu, the Portal of Life. All Pueblo Indians believe they come into this world from a lower world through a hole or opening, called by the Hopi, " Sipapu." After death, they return through the opening to the lower world, where they remain a period before PHOTO BY A. E. DEMARAY _. _.- . .... The Edwin Bridge going to the sky to become "rain gods." The Sipapu, or as it is also known, Augusta Bridge, is the largest. It has a span of 261 feet, is 128 feet wide, and 65 feet thick at its smallest part, and rises to a height of 222 feet above the stream bed. It has been so carved and smoothed and is so beautifully proportioned that it is difficult to realize its great size. Nature has carried out the general scheme by providing a more beautiful setting than in the case of the other two bridges. There are numerous ruins of cliff dwellings in the vicinity of the bridges perched in the canyon walls in almost inaccessible places. The monument also includes two large caves which are separated some little distance from the bridge region. The larger, Cigaret Cave, is in the face of a cliff under the rim rock of a canyon wall. It is about 150 feet wide, 20 feet high, and gracefully
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