Taroko was first designated a national park on December 12, 1937, under the Japanese colonial Governor-General of Taiwan. When Japan surrendered in 1945 and the Republic of China assumed control of the island, the new government abolished the park. For 41 years, the gorge and its surrounding mountains had no formal protection. It was not until November 28, 1986, that Taroko was re-established as a national park -- a decision that marked a watershed moment for Taiwan's environmental movement. After four decades of extraordinary economic growth that had often come at the expense of natural resources, the re-establishment signaled that conservation had finally become a national priority. In 2002, the park was nominated as a potential World Heritage Site. On November 28, 2021, Google commemorated its 35th anniversary with a homepage doodle, beaming the gorge's marble walls to billions of screens worldwide.

Taiwan itself is a product of collision. About four million years ago, the Philippine Sea Plate slammed into the Eurasian Plate in what geologists call the Penglai Orogeny, thrusting up the Central Mountain Range that runs the length of the island. The tectonic plates have not stopped moving -- the mountains continue to rise a few millimeters each year. The marble that forms the gorge walls began as calcium carbonate deposits on the ocean floor roughly 230 million years ago. Time, pressure, and heat lithified those deposits into limestone, which metamorphosed into marble as the collision pushed them skyward. The Liwu River, fed by heavy subtropical rains, carved the rest. Marble is hard and resistant to erosion, but the combination of rapid uplift and abundant water produced canyons of unusual steepness and narrowness -- slot canyons 300 meters high and barely a dozen meters wide, where sunlight touches the river only at midday.

The park's sights unfold in a westward progression from the entrance. The Shakadang Trail follows a crystalline tributary river through sculpted rock. Swallow Grotto offers a trail carved into the cliff face where swifts nest in marble hollows. The Tunnel of Nine Turns, reopened in November 2017 after extensive renovation, passes through hand-carved tunnels with openings framing dizzying views of the gorge below. The Baiyang Trail leads to a waterfall where water cascades through the ceiling of a tunnel. Further in, the Zhuilu Cliff trail traverses one of the most dramatic cliff faces in Taiwan, while the Eternal Spring Shrine -- built into the rock to commemorate the workers who died constructing the Central Cross-Island Highway -- sits above a waterfall that never stops. Buluowan, an indigenous community on a river terrace, offers cultural exhibits and some of the best views in the park.

On April 3, 2024, a magnitude 7.4 earthquake struck Taiwan's eastern coast -- the strongest since the 1999 Jiji earthquake. Taroko National Park took the worst of it. Landslides obliterated sections of Provincial Highway No. 8, trapping hundreds of people in the gorge. Hikers were caught in rockfalls on multiple trails. Most of the 19 people killed in the earthquake died within the park's boundaries. The landscape of the gorge was visibly scarred, with fresh rockslides exposing raw marble beneath the vegetation. Subsequent flooding later in 2024 compounded the destruction. As of 2025, much of the park remains closed -- a painful reality for a site that draws millions of visitors annually. But Taroko has endured worse than earthquakes. The same tectonic forces that threaten it are the forces that created it. The plates will keep colliding, the river will keep carving, and the gorge will continue to deepen long after the scars of 2024 have been absorbed into the marble.