Qualla: Goblin Valley State Park

Goblin Valley State Park: Introduction

Wed, 28 Jan 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit CGP Grey, CC BY 2.0. Arthur Chaffin called it the Valley of the Mushrooms. In the late 1920s, while searching for a route between Green River and Caineville in central Utah, Chaffin and two companions reached a vantage point and stopped cold. Below them spread a valley of strange, goblin-shaped rock formations -- thousands of sandstone hoodoos standing like a frozen army, surrounded by walls of eroded cliffs and five flat-topped buttes. Chaffin did not return for twenty years. When he finally came back in 1949, he spent days photographing the scores of intricately carved rocks. The valley had waited patiently. It had been waiting, in fact, for millions of years.

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Image: CGP Grey | CC BY 2.0

Goblin Valley State Park: An Army of Stone

Wed, 28 Jan 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Jessicakemper2, CC BY-SA 4.0. The goblins of Goblin Valley are hoodoos -- pillars of soft rock capped by harder stone that erodes more slowly, creating the mushroom shapes, leaning towers, and twisted figures that give the valley its name. Wind, water, and the freeze-thaw cycle have sculpted the Entrada Sands...

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Image: Jessicakemper2 | CC BY-SA 4.0

Goblin Valley State Park: Before the Cowboys

Wed, 28 Jan 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Donar Reiskoffer, CC BY 3.0. Long before Chaffin's discovery, the San Rafael Swell region bore the marks of Native American cultures. The Fremont, Paiute, and Ute peoples left pictograph and petroglyph panels throughout the area, and Goblin Valley itself contains several notable rock art panels alongside its...

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Image: Donar Reiskoffer | CC BY 3.0

Goblin Valley State Park: The Hoodoo That Fell

Wed, 28 Jan 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Greg Willis from Denver, CO, usa, CC BY-SA 2.0. In October 2013, Goblin Valley made national news for the worst possible reason. A Boy Scout leader intentionally toppled a delicately balanced hoodoo while two companions watched, one of them recording video that was uploaded to the internet. The men claimed the formation looked...

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Image: Greg Willis from Denver, CO, usa | CC BY-SA 2.0

Goblin Valley State Park: An Alien World in Utah

Wed, 28 Jan 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Krzysztof Ziarnek, Kenraiz, CC BY-SA 4.0. Hollywood recognized what Chaffin saw. In 1999, the makers of Galaxy Quest chose Goblin Valley as the filming location for an alien planet, and the valley's eroded sandstone dunes inspired the design of the fictional world's rock monsters. It is easy to see why: the landscape gen...

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Image: Krzysztof Ziarnek, Kenraiz | CC BY-SA 4.0