This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2014, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.

Canyonlands National Park celebrates its 50th birthday Friday, so we're taking a look at the Utah gem.

President Lyndon B. Johnson made Canyonlands the 31st national park Sept. 12, 1964. If you're ready for a snooze, try following the congressional act that created the park, which contains pages of the exact boundaries of the park. Here's a copy of the act.

And now, on to 10 interesting tidbits about the park.

No. 1 • The size dispute has been with us from the start. One of the initial proposals was for a million-acre park. The Tribune lays out some of the concerns in this story from March 29, 1961, and again in this story from July 7, 1961. Make sure to check out the map of the proposed park on the July 7 story.

No. 2 • And it's still raging. In fact, Utah's Republican delegation in Washington just sent President Barack Obama a letter urging him against expanding the park.

No. 3 • Since it's Canyonlands' birthday, how did it get its name? Well according to Samuel J. Schmieding's "From Controversy to Compromise to Cooperation: The Administrative History of Canyonlands National Park," explorer John Wesley Powell designated the region as "The Cañon Lands of Utah" in the 1878 Report on the Arid Region of the United States. By the early 20th century, the term "cañon" was anglicized, with the "n" and replaced by "ny." The two-word terminology was used until 1962–63, when the National Park Service merged them into "Canyonlands" as the name for the new national park.

No. 4 • A dinosaur was lost for 150 years but now it's been found … again. Check out an interesting story about the excavation and how the site essentially was lost for nearly a century and a half.

No. 5 • There's famous rock art in the park, and some of it may be newer than we think.

No. 6 • Renowned nature writer Terry Tempest Williams is a fan of the park. Here's what she said about it: "Landscape is what becomes us. If we see our natural heritage only as a quarry of building block instead of the bedrock of our integrity, we will indeed find ourselves not only homeless but rootless by the impoverishment of our own imagination. At a time when we hardly know what we can count on in a country of shifting values and priorities, Canyonlands is our bedrock, a geologic truth that we all share, the eyes of the future are looking back at us, praying that we may see beyond our own time."

No. 7 • The park features three distinct regions — Island in the Sky, The Maze and The Needles. Island sits at the northern end of the park and offers spectacular views from above. The Needles makes up the southeast corner of the park and was named "for the colorful spires of Cedar Mesa Sandstone that dominate the area," according to the National Park Service. The Maze is the least accessible region of the park and offers longer hikes and more remote areas.

No. 8 • How did Canyonlands become a national park? Well, Bates Wilson, Stewart Udall and Kent Frost (pictured above) are considered the three people who played the biggest role in the creation of the park. Get to know each one a little better as well as the park's current superintendent.

No. 9 • "The Sculptured Earth," a movie promoting the creation of Canyonlands National Park, was blocked from a showing at the University of Utah in the fall of 1962. It was created by the National Park Service and produced by Charles Eggert at the request of Interior Secretary Stewart Udall. The film instead was shown before a packed house at the Hotel Utah, with Udall there to deliver the introduction, according to Utah State Historical Society. It will be shown at the Canyonlands Historic Film Festival being held Saturday from 7 to 9 p.m. at Star Hall in Moab. Roy Webb, multimedia archivist at the University of Utah Marriott Library, will present three films: "The Desert" by Ray and Virginia Carter; the "Rusho/Crampton Film" by Bud Rusho; and "The Sculptured Earth."

No. 10 • It holds special meaning to a whole lot of people. Here's a sampling of some of the stories readers shared with us.

Donna Kemp Spangler • On Oct. 22, 2000, Jerry and I were married at "Island in the Sky" on a grand vista overlooking a spectacular valley.

Rob Stevenson, St. George • We visited Canyonlands for the first time in September 2013. The park was incredibly beautiful, but a little bit crowded. I waited for over an hour and a half for the huge crowd in front of Mesa Arch to take a picture. The people never moved, so I returned in January 2014. I got some wonderful pictures of Mesa Arch, and there were only five of us there. The snow added a lovely contrast to the colors of the park. It was an unforgettable day.

Jennifer Homel • Back when I worked for Moki Mac, I got to be down on a Green-side Cataract trip during the summer monsoons. For two trips in a row on the same day each week, huge storms went barreling up the river causing amazing flash flooding. The first week flooded all the washes and waterfalls on river right, and the second week flashed everything on river left. The photo is of a beautiful flash flood in Jasper canyon. As we pulled into camp, it was just a trickle of clear water dripping down the dry fall, and in the time it took for us to tie up our boats and go look, it had grown to this massive waterfall. Perfect timing.

Joseph Stanford, Murray • During 2009, we hiked to the overlook of the confluence of the Green and Colorado from each of the three parts of Canyonlands: the Island in the Sky (from the White Crack campsite on the White Rim), The Maze (from the campsites in the Dollhouse area) and The Needles (from Big Spring Canyon Overlook Trailhead).

Paul French • Hiking down to the gallery in The Maze.

Emily Hogan • I visited Canyonlands for the first time when I was almost 50. I'm amazed I never went there before. It wasn't that far from my other favorite parks, but I guess sometimes a place is just waiting for you. My favorite memories are, perhaps not surprisingly, of that wonderful lookout in the Island in the Sky district of the river gorges. But I also got a kick out of the "Don't Bust The Crust" buttons they handed out.

Natalie Ockey • We went to Island in the Sky in 2013, and our favorite hike was definitely Mesa Arch. We also loved the panoramic point.

Fran Ripley • We went to the Canyonlands for girls camp two summers back in the mid 1960s. The year we went to the rim of the Grand Canyon, I found myself snapping away roll after roll of the beauty as the approaching sunset changed the reflected light on the red landscape. It wasn't until I picked up my eagerly awaited developed photos that I saw several packages of black and white depictions of the same shot with very little variation.