The Honaker Trail is a hiking trail located near Goosenecks State Park

Goosenecks State Park

Goosenecks State Park is a state park of Utah, USA, overlooking a deep meander of the San Juan River. The park is located near the southern border of the state a short distance from Mexican Hat, Utah. Millions of years ago, the Monument Upwarp forced the river to carve incised meanders over deep...

 in southeastern Utah

Utah

Utah is a state in the Western United States. It was the 45th state to join the Union, on January 4, 1896. Approximately 80% of Utah's 2,763,885 people live along the Wasatch Front, centering on Salt Lake City. This leaves vast expanses of the state nearly uninhabited, making the population the...

. Built in the late 1890s and early 1900s as a supply route for gold prospectors

Gold prospecting

Gold prospecting is the act of searching for new gold deposits. Methods used vary with the type of deposit sought and the resources of the prospector...

, the 2.5 miles (4 km) trail connects the deeply entrenched

Entrenched river

An entrenched river is a river that is confined to a canyon or gorge, usually with a relatively narrow width and little or no flood plain, and often with meanders worn into the landscape...

 San Juan River with the canyon rim over 1200 feet (365.8 m) above. Popular with geologists, the trail serves as the type locality

Type locality (geology)

Type locality , also called type area or type locale, is the where a particular rock type, stratigraphic unit, fossil or mineral species is first identified....

 for the Pennsylvanian

Pennsylvanian

The Pennsylvanian is, in the ICS geologic timescale, the younger of two subperiods of the Carboniferous Period. It lasted from roughly . As with most other geochronologic units, the rock beds that define the Pennsylvanian are well identified, but the exact date of the start and end are uncertain...

 Honaker Trail Formation. Fossilized crinoid

Crinoid

Crinoids are marine animals that make up the class Crinoidea of the echinoderms . Crinoidea comes from the Greek word krinon, "a lily", and eidos, "form". They live both in shallow water and in depths as great as 6,000 meters. Sea lilies refer to the crinoids which, in their adult form, are...

s and brachiopod

Brachiopod

Brachiopods are a phylum of marine animals that have hard "valves" on the upper and lower surfaces, unlike the left and right arrangement in bivalve molluscs. Brachiopod valves are hinged at the rear end, while the front can be opened for feeding or closed for protection...

s, as well as trace fossil

Trace fossil

Trace fossils, also called ichnofossils , are geological records of biological activity. Trace fossils may be impressions made on the substrate by an organism: for example, burrows, borings , urolites , footprints and feeding marks, and root cavities...

s of other organisms are visible along portions of the trail.