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A hiker takes in the view from the top of the Angel's Landing Trail in Zion National Park.
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Zion National Park is turning 100 this summer.

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Zion National Park » Visitors who wander among these rocks carved by wind and water often describe a spiritual feeling while gazing on cliffs that resemble towers and altars. But this is a place where faith can be sorely tested.

Zion is an ancient land plagued by flash floods, earthquakes, rock slides and fire. A landscape celebrated by artists has exacted a toll on those who would shape the land into roads and tunnels, homesteads and lodges, trails and campgrounds.

In the century that Zion has been designated a national park, the people who live and visit here have learned its rugged terrain can change in an instant. An 1880 rock fall created the Great Red Arch and buried a

Hikers pick their way up and down the Angel's Landing Trail in Zion National Park. It's one of the premier trails in the park, taking hikers up a steep rock spine that climbs to a magnificent view of the Virgin River and Zion Canyon below. (Al Hartmann/The Salt Lake Tribune )
farmhouse. An ordinary thunderstorm can be transformed by canyon walls into a terrifying wall of water, rocks and timber.

On a late September day in 1961, 26 people were caught in the Zion Narrows. Five of them died as the Virgin River crested at 14 feet.

"The flood began as a trickle, first over our shoe tops," wrote an eyewitness. "Then came what appeared as a great wave of hay. It was pine needles. Then came the roar and finally the trees, brush and boulders. It all happened within seconds."

Janet Jones of West Valley City said her first husband's cousin Frank Johnson died in that flood. His body was never found.

"They were having a great time hiking through the narrows with several groups of people when a flash flood came raging down upon them," recalled Jones. "The people began yelling for everyone to run and they did. Some made it to high ground and others made it out but Frank wasn't one of them. They searched for him for awhile but gave up because the area buried was too large and the silt and mud that covered him and others was too deep to ever find their bodies."

In the last century, Zion has become an international tourist attraction, one that is marking its centennial with special exhibits, lectures, guided hikes, a reservation-only tour of the Zion-Mt. Carmel tunnel, an employee reunion and a commemorative stamp that goes on sale June 29. The Zion Natural History Association has published a 144-page book, A Century of Solitude, which features color reproductions of 70 historic paintings and 68 contemporary ones.

Clearly, Zion is a wellspring of inspiration and passion for untold numbers of people, more than 86 million since 1919.

The Mormons who came to settle the area found comfort in its majestic beauty. Isaac Behunin, the first of those settlers, called the canyon Zion, a Biblical reference to a place of refuge and sanctuary.

"Here, we have natural temples," he said.

"We can worship as we please."

When explorer John Wesley Powell visited in 1872, he used the Paiute word Mukuntuweap, which means "straight canyon." Though President William Howard Taft kept that term when he created Mukuntuweap National Monument in 1909, the name was not popular with locals and, according to historian A.M. Woodbury, Congress saw fit to revert to Zion when creating the national park in 1916.

The place has impressed many people of all religions.

In 1916, a fiery Methodist minister from Ogden named Frederick Vining Fisher christened the Great White Throne and Angels Landing. According to author John W. Van Cott, Fisher wrote that the features should be spoken of reverently as the throne of God and the place where angels kneel in obeisance, not worthy to come closer.

Modern visitors express similar sentiments.

"To me, the grandeur is of a spiritual nature," said Jock Whitworth, the park's superintendent. "People who believe in a higher being express thoughts of a spiritual nature."

The 150,000-acre park has become a tourist attraction that draws visitors from all over the world, putting enormous pressure on its ecosystem. From the time the first automobile reached the park in 1914, followed by the Union Pacific Railroad building the Zion Lodge in 1925, tourists have been welcomed, sometimes with lethal results.

Two men died while building the Zion tunnels to connect Zion with Bryce Canyon and the North Rim of the Grand Canyon in the late 1920s. The tunnels, at that time part of the most expensive road built in the U.S., opened on July 4, 1930.

Efforts to lure more people to this spectacular place were perhaps too successful. By the time the shuttle system debuted in 1997 and vehicles were banned during the busiest times of the year, 2.4 million people often overwhelmed the park. Last year saw a record 2.7 million visitors.

Ray O'Neil, a veteran Zion backcountry ranger, worries that many modern park visitors seek adventure without fully appreciating the park's beauty.

"What you wonder is if the desire to have high adventure sports that occur over the course of one day is somehow connected to the fact that technology dominates every minute of our lives," he said. "We want short, exciting bursts versus long, slow solitary experiences."