Top 10 Tallest Natural Arches in The United States

#1: Rainbow Bridge, Utah (Height ≈290 ft; Span ≈275 ft; Thickness up to ≈42 ft)

Rainbow Bridge doesn’t merely arch—it levitates a chunk of Navajo Sandstone almost the height of a 28‑story building above a canyon floor that, depending on Lake Powell’s level, can be sandy, silty, or a drowned bathtub ring. Discovered by a 1909 government expedition for the outside world (but revered by Navajo, Hopi, San Juan Southern Paiute and other peoples for centuries as Tsé’naa Na’ní’áhí—“rock rainbow”), the bridge was once an arduous multiday horseback slog through what John Wetherill called “a twist in stone”; now dropping reservoir levels are forcing boaters to hike farther again, letting silence retake the alcove. The bridge is a classic meander‑cut: a stream once looped in a tight oxbow, sawed through the fin, abandoned its shortcut, and left a freestanding lintel 290 feet tall and 275 feet across. Walk the sanctioned trail today and you’ll pass varnish‑streaked walls where ancestral hand‑and‑toe holds (Moqui steps) ascend impossibly blank faces, cottonwoods reconquering mud flats, and the occasional lizard doing push‑ups to prove territorial bravado. Lightning has tattooed the rim black more than once; rangers tell of a bolt hitting in the ’90s with a cannon‑crack thump that shook dust from the arch like flour. In the 1960s, a few climbers roped across; modern regulations ban that, and signs ask visitors not to walk beneath out of cultural respect—some still do, but you’ll notice even chatterboxes drop their voices to whispers in the cool shadow. Stats delight: you could tuck the Statue of Liberty under the opening, torch and all, with airspace to spare; the thickness tapers from roughly 42 feet at the crown to more than 30 at the legs, confirmation to sandstone’s paradoxical strength and fragility. Hidden in side alcoves are pockets of maidenhair fern fed by seeps, in the floor’s sand you may spot the tracks of a kangaroo rat or ringtail, and at night, when boat noise dies, the Milky Way turns the aperture into a cosmic keyhole. Rainbow Bridge is eroding—talus piles rise grain by grain, freeze–thaw loosens blocks—but for our short human span, it’s still the arch that makes people gasp, step back, and realize geology can draw perfect curves at heroic scale.

#2: Kolob Arch, Zion National Park, Utah (Height ≈287 ft; Span ≈287 ft; Thickness ≈75 ft)

Kolob Arch is Rainbow’s shyer sibling—nearly as tall (about 287 feet), about as wide, yet tucked in a shadowed alcove up La Verkin Creek where the day’s heat lingers and the night’s cool drains away like a liquid. Reaching it means a 14‑mile round trip (or more, if you detour for waterfalls), crossing basalt boulder fields and fording a creek that can be ankle‑numbing in spring, a trickle by fall. You hike through a canyon of Kayenta ledges and Navajo walls until suddenly the world opens and there it is, a pale orange parabola suspended across a high alcove, its top sprouting a few bravely rooted pinyons and its belly streaked with desert varnish tears. Unlike many arches forged from cavern collapse, Kolob appears to have formed as an alcove on one side of a fin gnawed backward until only a thin cap remained—a lithic eyelid left ajar. Down below, a seep-fed hanging garden glows emerald with maidenhair ferns and monkeyflowers even in July’s oven, and canyon wrens stitch liquid runs of song that bounce so cleanly you can’t place the bird. Old trip reports talk of rangers hauling in wedding cakes for couples who swore eternal love under the stone; newer ones tell of flash floods that erased parts of the trail, forcing detours up slickrock ramps strafed by lizards. Kolob’s numbers have been refined by laser rangefinders, but a few feet either way doesn’t matter when you’re craning your neck until vertebrae complain. Sit a while and watch shadows creep, notice how wind carries the scent of wet sand and sun-warmed sage, how ravens surf afternoon thermals in lazy loops just outside the arch’s frame. Kolob’s mass feels more intimate than Rainbow’s—closer, encircling, like a ceiling in a private cathedral—and yet the top is still 28 stories up, an impossible sheet of stone held aloft by physics and luck.

#3: Sipapu Natural Bridge, Natural Bridges NM, Utah (Height ≈220 ft; Span ≈268 ft; Thickness ≈53 ft)

“Sipapu” in Hopi cosmology is the emergence portal from an earlier world, and the name fits the second‑largest natural bridge in the U.S.—a 220‑foot‑tall, 268‑foot‑span Navajo Sandstone arc that vaults White Canyon like a stone rainbow rendered in rust and varnish. Getting down to its feet from the loop road is a calf‑burning ballet of stairs, wooden ladders, and slickrock scrambles, the path built by CCC crews in the 1930s who probably shook their heads at the audacity of gravity. Talus and sand have risen beneath over centuries, so that giant oval seems closer than it was when Ancestral Puebloans stashed corn in granaries tucked into overhangs across the creek; you can still spot tiny doorways and soot stains if you look with respect. Water—not wind—did the cutting here: a meander undercut a soft shale parting, eventually sawed completely through a fin, then abandoned the shortcut, leaving a freestanding bridge that still funnels flash floods beneath in brown roaring curtains each monsoon burst. Interesting things lurk: the pebbly Tapeats-like conglomerates in the channel that tell of ancient stream energy, flint flakes in the sand from a thousand years of tool sharpening, pictographs fading under sunbursts. One family famously lugged an inflatable raft down only to find the “pool” under Sipapu two inches deep; a violin left under a boulder by a harried hiker was recovered a year later warped but serenely undisturbed—proof that this canyon sees more floods than thieves. Sit under the shadow in spring and canyon treefrogs trill like squeaky toys; in fall, cottonwoods scatter gold doubloons that collect in eddies; in winter, rime crusts the shaded side while the sunlit face radiates warmth like a stove. Sipapu feels like a portal, and whether you walk beneath (many do) or skirt respectfully, you sense the weight above as much metaphysical as geological—hundreds of feet of stone, yes, but also dozens of generations’ worth of stories pooled in one graceful void.

#4: Stevens Arch, Glen Canyon NRA, Utah (Height ≈220 ft; Span ≈275 ft; Thickness ≈40 ft)

Stevens Arch hangs like an eyelid a thousand feet above the Escalante River’s confluence with Stevens Canyon—a pale crescent of Navajo Sandstone roughly 220 feet high and a bit longer in span, visible only if you’ve earned it by slogging miles of hot sand or floating in a packraft through a river that’s more liquid sand than water by late summer. Unlike the park-and-gawk ease of some arches, this one reveals itself as a prize at the end of a labyrinth: tamarisk thickets to bash, ankle‑deep quicksand to curse, potholes to skirt whose fairy shrimp hatch with each storm. The arch formed from a soaring fin gnawed by alcove processes—salt crystallization, capillary action, and sporadic seepage—until a window broke through, an improbable void left in a cliff that otherwise frowns solid. High above, potholes atop the fin collect stormwater, flash ephemeral tonics for buzzy bees and desert beetles before they evaporate to leave rings of salt. Hidden behind the arch, if you’re acrobatic and heedless, is a shadowy slot where ferns cling to varnish streaks, and canyon mice stash seeds in cool packs of sticks and dung. Stats are less official—few crews haul survey gear into the Escalante’s guts—but laser hits put height and span in the 220–275 foot ballpark. A packrafter once flipped at a laughable 15 cubic feet per second when a dead tamarisk pinned his bow; Earth karma repaid him with a perfectly sealed drybag dinner someone else lost upstream. Geologically, you can read cross‑beds in the arch’s ribs—ancient dune faces now vertical—while hollows underfoot show salt wicking up, stressing and popping sand grains like micro fireworks. At dusk, when katabatic winds drain the cool from slickrock lobes, the arch glows salmon, bats stitch black on orange, and coyotes test howls in rock amphitheater acoustics. Stevens feels personal because you worked for it, but also planetary because 220 feet of air framed by sandstone tells you time doesn’t care how sore your calves are.

#5: Tonto Natural Bridge, Arizona (Height ≈183 ft; Span ≈150 ft; Thickness ≈60 ft)

In a box canyon near Payson, Arizona, a limestone and travertine giant spans Pine Creek—Tonto Natural Bridge—standing about 183 feet from creekbed to rim, 150 feet across, and thick enough to feel like a cave you forgot to close. Unlike Utah’s sandstone ribs, this one grew as much as it eroded: mineral‑rich water from a spring oozed over a logjam for millennia, precipitating travertine (think stalactites, but horizontal), gradually armoring itself into a bridge while underlying rock dissolved and collapsed. The result is a calcified wave frozen over a creek that today flows clear and cold, tumbling into boulder chutes where kids squeal in August heat and javelinas root for fallen prickly pear fruit above. The underside drips with stalactites and curtains, glistening in monsoon humidity, and ferns sprout in calcite pockets like green eyelashes on a white brow. Discovered by a Scotsman, David Gowan, in 1877 while hiding from Apaches (so the story goes), the bridge later became a family homestead—Gowan’s relatives ran a lodge right on this geologic wonder until Arizona made it a state park in the 1990s. Hidden gems: a side cavern where bats roost and drip lines sketch slow art; fossil snails embedded in travertine layers; the ruin of an old irrigation pipeline used to water an orchard on the rim. Stats tickle engineers: the travertine shell is estimated over 60 feet thick in places, strong yet brittle; chunks occasionally calve off with a gunshot crack, spalling into the creek below. Anecdotes: a flash flood in 1990 jammed whole ponderosas into the opening, making a beaver dam so dense rangers had to chainsaw their way to daylight; a ranger once rappelled to rescue a stranded dog whose owners had tried the “short way” down. Winter brings icicles six feet long; summer brings monsoon waterfalls that glimmer like fiber optics in slant light. This bridge is tall, yes, but also tactile—you can smell wet limestone, hear drops ping, watch algae paint slick greens—and feel you’re in a living arch still exhaling minerals.

#6: Landscape Arch, Arches National Park, Utah (Height ≈180 ft; Span ≈290 ft; Thickness ≤10 ft at thinnest)

Landscape Arch is the world’s most elegant accident: a 290‑foot ribbon of Entrada Sandstone so thin—less than 10 feet at its frailest—that sunlight glows through places and geologists field constant “when will it fall?” questions. Height-wise, the opening rises roughly 180 feet above the wash, but the numbers don’t capture the improbability: this much air, this little rock. Three huge slabs—70 feet long, 30 feet, and 47 feet—peeled off in the ’90s with thunderclap booms that sent tourists scrambling and the Park Service closing the old closer trail for good. Today you view it from a fence, craning over cryptobiotic soil crusts (living, please stay off) while collared lizards dart like jeweled sprites between blackbrush clumps. The arch began as a fin carved by vertical joints; runoff, frost wedging, and salt flaking nibbled alcoves into both sides until only a narrow lintel remained. Hidden in nearby fins are potholes that, after a storm, hatch shrimp that complete life cycles in days, while off‑trail (closed to you) an even skinnier sibling, Partition Arch, peers at a slice of the La Sal skyline. Anecdotes: a family picnicking beneath in 1991 caught the first rockfall on amateur video—dust plume, kids screaming, dad cursing—and unwittingly became the arch’s cautionary tale; in 2014, a tourist tossed a rock to “see how far it would fall,” drawing a chorus of rebukes and an impromptu geology lesson. At sunrise, the arch goes peach then apricot; at noon, it washes white, shimmering in heat; at night, it slices the Milky Way, a stone horizon suspended above sand. Landscape Arch will collapse, and maybe soon, but for now it’s a masterclass in tension and time, tall enough to awe, thin enough to terrify.

#7: Druid Arch, Canyonlands National Park, Utah (Height ≈150 ft; Span ≈65 ft per opening; Thickness ≈30 ft)

Named by 1940s hikers who thought its twin uprights and lintel looked like Stonehenge, Druid Arch rises about 150 feet above Elephant Canyon’s slickrock floor, a blocky Wingate/Kayenta hybrid that mixes arch and tower in a form part window, part doorway, all drama. The approach is a half‑day hike through a wonderland of jointed sandstone, dryfalls you bypass via ladders, and sandy washes where lizards leave cursive signatures; the last scramble up a rubbly gully delivers a reveal so sudden you’ll forget to breathe for a beat. Two adjacent openings make a face: one tall and narrow, the other squatter, both cut by undercutting and frost popping along thin beds; together they let slashes of sky into the shadowy alcove like cathedral lancet windows. Hidden nearby: Moqui marbles—iron concretions rolling like ball bearings underfoot; a pocket seep where columbine blooms improbably; a petroglyph panel etched with bighorns a short detour away if you know which side canyon to slip into. Stats are modest compared to Rainbow, but stand beneath and those 150 feet feel infinite, amplified by the way the arch is perched on a pedestal you can’t quite get under. Anecdotes: a 1978 party carried in a cheap plastic Druid statue as a joke, leaving it hidden for others to find; by ’85 it was gone, replaced by a more respectful cairn tradition. Geologically, the arch rides the interface between Wingate’s massive cross‑beds and Kayenta’s thinner ledges, erosion preferentially widening fractures into rectangular holes—hence the monolithic look. Afternoon light turns the arch copper; morning backlights it; winter snows etch its edges in frosting. Ravens often perch on the lintel, croaking disdain at climbers who stare up, itching to break rules. Druid feels ancient because it’s angular, not smooth—tall but blocky, a glimpse at how arches start as windows in fins and only later erode into graceful curves.

#8: Corona Arch, Utah (Height ≈140 ft; Span ≈105 ft; Thickness ≈25 ft)

Corona Arch, a.k.a. “Little Rainbow,” sits outside Arches National Park in BLM land near Moab, a 140‑foot‑tall, 105‑foot‑span Entrada Sandstone sweep that once hosted the infamous “World’s Largest Rope Swing” YouTube craze until fatalities ended the fun. The hike in is family‑friendly—a mile and a half over slickrock marked by cairns and a steel cable, past Bowtie Arch’s pothole window—and then Corona appears framed by the sky with a smaller sibling, Pinto Arch, just around the bend. Stand beneath and you’ll notice the arch’s inner face is scalloped like a seashell, evidence of flaking and spalling layers undercut by capillary water and crystal growth; look closer and you’ll see desert varnish streaks like tears and the occasional pothole plant (prickly pear in a teaspoon of soil). Hidden gem: on summer evenings, swifts dive and swoop through the opening in aerial ballets, snatching gnats in the updraft; winter brings ice curtains after rare storms freeze seep lines into glassy beards. Anecdotes: a 2013 accident where a jumper misjudged rope length made national news and triggered a ban; an earlier incident saw a BASE jumper snag a line and pendulum into the wall, limping out with sandstone rash and a bruised ego. Geologically, Corona is a relict fin perforated by undercutting and collapse—Entrada’s thin beds flake away as moisture wicks up and evaporates, leaving a lintel whose days are numbered but whose thickness still inspires trust. Locals know to go at sunrise for solitude (tour buses arrive by 10); photographers love late afternoon when red rock glows and La Sal peaks snow‑cap the horizon. Corona isn’t tallest, but its accessibility, drama, and that clean parabolic shape make it an icon—one that shows how “tall” can still feel intimate when you can put a hand on the rock and feel sun warmth stored in stone.

#9: La Ventana Natural Arch, El Malpais, New Mexico (Height ≈120 ft; Span ≈165 ft; Thickness ≈40 ft)

La Ventana—“the window”—pierces a sandstone bluff on the edge of El Malpais lava fields, 120 feet high and 165 feet across, a pale Cretaceous Zuni Sandstone arc eroded by a combination of stream undercutting and gravity sloughing off weaker beds. The short trail to the viewpoint passes piñon, juniper, and, in spring, carpets of verbena that smell like lemon candy; all the while basalt flows loom black on the horizon, a reminder this arch shares space with one of the Southwest’s youngest volcanic provinces. Stand at the fence and you’ll see cross‑beds dipping like frozen waves, evidence this sandstone was once part of a dune sea; look higher and find tinkertoy‑like fractures darkened by varnish. Hidden gems: if you poke around the area (respect closures), you can find small lava tubes in the malpais, their skylights framing day like mini‑arches; in winter, icicles sometimes hang from La Ventana’s lip, glass daggers shimmying in the wind. Anecdotes: Route 66 drivers once detoured to picnic under its base before fences went up; a 1980s wedding took place at dawn with a ranger officiating and coyotes providing the recessional howls. Geologically, the arch formed where a stream exploited a joint, undercut a cliff, and left a buttress; frost wedging and root jacking widened it—plants pry rocks with patience humans can’t mimic. Summer monsoon storms roll off the Zuni Mountains, popping lightning like paparazzi bulbs; winter brings bluebird skies and night temps that make sandstone ping as it contracts. La Ventana’s not as tall as Utah’s titans, but it feels taller because you view it from below, framed by ponderosa scent and raven croaks, a quiet giant on New Mexico’s checkerboard of grants and lava.

#10: Owachomo Bridge, Natural Bridges NM, Utah (Height ≈106 ft; Span ≈180 ft; Thickness ≈9 ft at crown)

Owachomo may be the smallest of Natural Bridges National Monument’s trio, but it earns a top‑ten slot for height at around 106 feet and for being an object lesson in geologic fragility: its crown is only about 9 feet thick, a stone scimitar honed by time. Named from a Hopi word meaning “rock mound” (after a nearby formation), Owachomo can be visited quickly—0.5 miles round trip—but linger and you’ll notice details: Tafoni honeycombs in the abutments where wind plucks grains; lithic flakes in the sand from Archaic hunters; the smell of sage intensifying after a monsoon sprinkle. The bridge formed as a meander loop undercut a fin, classic White Canyon hydrology; but where Sipapu still channels significant flow, Owachomo is mostly high and dry now, with only flash floods licking its feet. Hidden gem: night skies here are some of the darkest in the Lower 48; set up away from the trail and you’ll watch the arch silhouette swallow constellations as Earth turns. Anecdotes: in 1908, President Taft created the monument partly because a surveyor raved about “three of the largest natural bridges in the world”—boosting was in style—and early tourists arrived by wagon, camping under the arch both for shade and because they could; modern-day visitors sometimes stage yoga poses beneath, not realizing a 9‑foot stone blade above them is creaking imperceptibly toward collapse. Winter lays snow scallops on its spine; summer bakes it to lizard‑sunning temp; spring wildflowers sprinkle purple and yellow confetti around its base. Owachomo feels like a countdown—tall enough to awe, thin enough to make you swallow—proof that gravity and entropy are patient artists.

From Rainbow’s skyscraper void to Owachomo’s slender scimitar, America’s tallest natural arches and bridges prove that “height” isn’t just for peaks. These stone vaults form by many tricks—meanders sawing shortcuts, caves collapsing, fins eroding from both sides, springs building travertine roofs—and every foot of opening comes with a backstory: floods that roar, lightning that tattoos, weddings, rescues, foolish rope swings, sacred prohibitions. Their metrics—290 feet, 287, 220—anchor awe, but their true stature lies in the way they frame sky, sound, and story. They are fragile clocks, thinning crowns and rising talus ticking time you can’t hear unless you sit quietly and listen to a pebble ping. Visit softly: stay on trails, honor closures and cultures, pack out more than you brought, and whisper under the stone. Gravity is undefeated, but for a geological heartbeat, these arches hold up slices of heaven so we can stand beneath and learn humility by looking straight through rock.