Goblin Valley State Park

Site: Goblin Valley State Park Where: A remote section of central Utah, between the towns of Hanksville and Green River. When was this formation created? The rocks are about 170 million years old, dating to the Jurassic era. But erosion has been chiseling the strange shapes only within the last 10 million years. What geological forces were at work? Erosion.

GOBLIN VALLEY, Utah - "The goblins will get ya if ya don't watch out!" wrote poet James Whitcomb Riley in 1885, probably just about the time that cowboys searching for cattle in southern Utah stumbled into this extraordinary collection of sandstone formations that eerily resemble goblins. The goblins may not have gotten the cowboys, but they have been drawing visitors ever since. The area was called Mushroom Valley in the 1920s by Arthur Chaffin, who operated a ferry across the Colorado River and was looking for alternative routes when he and two companions arrived at a vantage point and saw before them a valley of strangely shaped rock formations.

GOBLIN VALLEY, Utah - "The goblins will get ya if ya don't watch out!" wrote poet James Whitcomb Riley in 1885, probably just about the time that cowboys searching for cattle in southern Utah stumbled into this extraordinary collection of sandstone formations that eerily resemble goblins. The goblins may not have gotten the cowboys, but they have been drawing visitors ever since. The area was called Mushroom Valley in the 1920s by Arthur Chaffin, who operated a ferry across the Colorado River and was looking for alternative routes when he and two companions arrived at a vantage point and saw before them a valley of strangely shaped rock formations.

Site: Goblin Valley State Park Where: A remote section of central Utah, between the towns of Hanksville and Green River. When was this formation created? The rocks are about 170 million years old, dating to the Jurassic era. But erosion has been chiseling the strange shapes only within the last 10 million years. What geological forces were at work? Erosion.

It's tough to visit California's Bodie Hills. Although many travelers turn off U.S. Highway 395 in the Eastern Sierra to see the well-known ghost town of the same name, far fewer venture into its rugged backdrop, which has no paved roads, no marked trails, no developed campgrounds. "These really are the last remnants of the Wild West," says Stacy Corless, who works for a nonprofit seeking to protect and preserve the hills. Bodie Hills isn't a national monument — at least not yet. Along with 13 other lightly traveled spots in the West, it was identified in an Interior Department document earlier this year as a "good candidate" for designation.