Ancient Pueblo People were followed much later by Paiute and Navajo groups who named the bridge Nonnezoshe or "rainbow turned to stone."

[4] The next year, on May 30, 1910, U.S. President William Howard Taft used presidential proclamation to designate Rainbow Bridge National Monument.

Teddy Roosevelt and Zane Grey were among the first visitors to make the trek by foot and horseback from Oljeto or Navajo Mountain.

Higher water made motorboat access to Rainbow Bridge much easier, bringing thousands of visitors each year.

[4] In 1974, Navajo tribal members who lived in the history of Rainbow Bridge filed suit in U.S. District Court against the Secretary of the Interior, the Commissioner of the Bureau of Reclamation, and the Director of the National Park Service.

The suit was an attempt to preserve important Navajo religious sites that were being inundated by the rising waters of Lake Powell.

Today, the National Park Service asks visitors to be respectful of its significance to the people who have long held Rainbow Bridge sacred.

[6] Rainbow Bridge is made up of sandstone originally deposited by wind as sand dunes during the end of the Triassic and the Jurassic periods.

Extreme fluctuations in climate during the Triassic and Jurassic periods—the region was alternately a sea and desert on par with the Sahara—produced layers of sandstone with different levels of hardness.

[7] By the end of the Jurassic, the sea returned to cover these layers of sandstone and compressed them so tightly that they would persist until the present day.

As the creek flowed around Rainbow Bridge fin, these abrasive eddies formed on both the upstream and downstream sides and cut circular alcoves in the rock wall.