Which U.S. national park includes the Waterpocket Fold in Utah?

The U.S. national park that includes Utah’s Waterpocket Fold is Capitol Reef National Park.

The Waterpocket Fold is a nearly 100-mile-long monocline, a step-like bend in Earth’s crust that forms the park’s central geologic backbone. It developed during the Laramide orogeny roughly 70 to 50 million years ago, when compressional forces that helped build the Rocky Mountains warped the rock layers of the Colorado Plateau.

Capitol Reef protects the most dramatic and accessible part of the fold, along with sandstone cliffs, domes, canyons, natural bridges, and fossil-bearing strata. The name combines the white Navajo Sandstone domes, compared with capitol buildings, and “reef,” an old local term for a rocky barrier to travel.

The answer is easy to confuse with Utah’s other national parks. Arches is known for natural arches, Zion for its canyon walls, and Canyonlands for broad canyon systems. Capitol Reef is the park most directly defined by the Waterpocket Fold.