The San Rafael River is a tributary of the Green River, approximately 90 miles (140 km) long, in east central Utah in the United States. The river flows across a sparsely populated arid region of the Colorado Plateau, and is known for the isolated, scenic gorge through which it flows.
It rises in northwestern Emery County, approximately 5 miles (8.0 km) southeast of Castle Dale, by the confluence of Cottonwood, Huntington, and Ferron creeks, which provide its headwaters in the Wasatch Plateau region. It flows ESE along the north side of the Coal Cliffs and the prominent anticline called the San Rafael Swell, passing north of Window Butte (Window Blind Peak) and through two narrow slot canyons in Coconino Sandstone called the Upper and Lower Black Box. This area is known as the San Rafael Gorge, sometimes called the "Little Grand Canyon". (Actually, the "Little Grand Canyon" is a few miles upstream where the San Rafael passes between the Wedge on the north and Sid's Mountain and No Man's Mountain on the south). After passing through the San Rafael Reef it enters the 15 mile (24 km) long San Rafael Valley, where it joins the Green River from the west, approximately 10 miles (16 km) south of the town of Green River. The San Rafael is the last major tributary of the Green before it joins the Colorado River in Canyonlands National Park.
Diversion tunnels at the headwaters of the river in the Manti-La Sal National Forest provide irrigation water to Sanpete County on the west side of the Wasatch Plateau.
Famous quotes containing the words san and/or river:
“It is an odd thing, but every one who disappears is said to be seen at San Francisco. It must be a delightful city, and possess all the attractions of the next world.”
—Oscar Wilde (1854–1900)
“Every incident connected with the breaking up of the rivers and ponds and the settling of the weather is particularly interesting to us who live in a climate of so great extremes. When the warmer days come, they who dwell near the river hear the ice crack at night with a startling whoop as loud as artillery, as if its icy fetters were rent from end to end, and within a few days see it rapidly going out. So the alligator comes out of the mud with quakings of the earth.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)