HIKING HAPPENINGS - March 2026

The battle was fought under clear skies after overnight thunderstorms over March 8 and 9, 1862, part of the Confederates’ effort to break the Union blockade that had cut off Norfolk and Richmond from international shipping. Many years later, someone noticed that a couple of isolated flat-topped sandstone rock formations in Grand County, Utah, had a striking resemblance to the ironclad battleships Monitor and Merrimac involved in that battle. On a recent cool, gusty afternoon with blue skies streaked with flimsy shawls of cirrus clouds, I ventured north to take a look at those Estrada sandstone counterparts: the larger Merrimac Butte covers 2,000 to 6,000 feet in width and is 1,600 feet long, while the smaller Monitor Butte is shaped much like the rotating turret (or “Yankee cheese box”) of Merrimac’s Union attacker.

To get to this trailhead, I drove north out of Moab up US 191 for about 11 miles, then turned left/west onto State Route 313. After crossing the railroad tracks, I gawked at astounding hoodoos, balanced rocks, and swollen pillows of slickrock as I climbed up through the geologic layer cake of Sevenmile Canyon. After about four miles, I saw a View Area sign, then the Monitor and Merrimac Butte Viewpoint turnoff on the right/north side. The parking area has a toilet and an information kiosk accessed by a paved walkway. A more primitive “strolling trail” loop then begins along a path defined by logs in the sandy areas and dashes of olive-green paint in the slickrock sections. I walked to the north end of the lollipop that skirts the edge of a desert mesa and looked down into a rubbly wash and across to the stately buttes. This trail has little shade and no water except for what you bring yourself. It is also rattlesnake territory, so be on the lookout. Juniper and pinyon trees offer framing for photographs of the buttes, bathed in especially dramatic golds, salmons, and corals in the late afternoon. Other vegetation along this overlook includes singleleaf ash (Fraxinus anomala), Mormon tea (Ephedra viridis), and thorny blackbrush scrub (Cologne ramosissima), plus various grasses. A snack stop of limeade, crackers, and guacamole (avocados are in season) settled my soul as I sat in welcome solitude amid the desert quiet, contemplating explosive conflicts of long ago.

The Battle of Hampton Roads took place early in America’s Civil War (1861–1865). But, you might ask, how were roads involved in a naval battle? Turns out that sailors refer to “roads” or a “roadstead” as a sheltered body of water where ships can safely drop anchor and are protected from currents, tides, and swells. Hampton Roads is a saltwater estuary where Virginia’s Elizabeth and Nanosecond Rivers meet the James River. The North’s ironclad USS Monitor (from the Latin for “one who warns”) faced off against the South’s CSS Virginia, rebuilt and fortified from the scuttled remains of the north’s steam frigate Merrimac (after New England’s Merrimack River). The battle resulted in the deaths of 261 Union sailors and seven Confederate sailors, mostly from attacks on wooden-hulled ships.

The two ironclads featured bolts, nuts, rivets, and iron plates, so cannonballs bounced off the battleships’ stout armor. The engagement eventually ended in a stalemate, though both sides claimed victory. However, a new age of revolutionary naval technology had arrived. Less than a year afterward, both wrecked ships lay at the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean: the Virginia/Merrimac off Norfolk, Virginia; the Monitor off Cape Hatteras, North Carolina. Their sandstone counterparts however—no rivets, no cannons, no flames and smoke—remain high, dry, and silent, locked forever in a doomed windswept standoff.

Kathy Grossman is an L.A. girl, artist, nature journalist, writer, and a fan of the inclusive kindness of Valentine’s Day. Her father worked in Hollywood and was friends with Daws Butler and Mel Blanc, Barney Rubble’s voice actors.