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Bryce and Capitol Reef

This Drive Comes From...

National Geographic Driving Guide: Southwest

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Colonists recruited to southern Utah’s high plateau country for the Church of Latter-day Saints’ cotton campaign hoped for the same commercial success as the American South. But Mormon Dixie is purely Southwestern, its red and yellow sedimentary rock uplifted and folded by phenomenal geology and sculptured by erosion into some of the region’s most unique and richly colored landscapes. The drive between Cedar City and Fruita may be Utah’s most scenic; along its meandering loop lie the great amphitheater of Cedar Breaks, bewilderingly intricate Bryce Canyon, the radiant cliffs of Kodachrome Basin, and the lordly ramparts of Capitol Reef. Ruins, relics, and rock art left by Anasazi and Fremont Indians reach back 1,000 years to an age veiled in mystery, but these landscapes, where their gods lived and ruled, still inspire awe and wonder. CONTINUED

- Cedar Breaks National Monument
- Bryce Canyon National Park
- Escalante
- Fruita
- Fremont Indian State Park
- Old Cove Fort
- Parowan Gap Petroglyphs

(Continued From Top)

Start the tour by driving east from Cedar City. Here Utah 14’s climb east up over the Hurricane Cliffs onto the Markagunt Plateau begins a 4,200-foot [1,280-meter] ascent through the pine, spruce, and aspen of 1.9-million-acre [768,902.7-hectare] Dixie National Forest (+1 435 865 3200), especially popular among backcountry horseback riders.

Cedar Breaks National Monument

Cedar Breaks National Monument

Photograph © Danny Lehman

A vividly colored limestone amphitheater 3 miles [4.8 kilometers] wide and a half mile [0.8 kilometer] deep, filled with red-orange and lion yellow spires, balanced rocks, and caprock mesas, Cedar Breaks National Monument (+1 435 586 0787. Late May-Sept.) is considered by many to be one of Utah’s most scenic phenomena. Tradition has it that Mormon settlers mistook Utah’s Juniperus osteosperma for cedar and coupled it with a 19th-century term for eroded badlands. At 10,000 feet [3,048 meters] the Breaks have a short season—snow can linger in June and be falling again before the usual late September closing of the cliffside Visitor Center at Point Supreme.
The center stands at 10,350 feet [3,154.7 meters], almost a half mile [0.8 kilometer] above the beginning of the Breaks. Scenic viewpoints along the 5-mile [8-kilometer] paved rim road ponder the wilderness below from different angles. Just down the road, the 2-mile-long [3.2-kilometer-long] Ramparts Trail skirts the canyon rim, where bristlecone pines up to 1,600 years old gnarl out over the void, looking like gray driftwood with a green sprig of life here and there. The trail continues to Spectra Point, switchbacking down and up to Ramparts Overlook, a premier viewpoint. The shorter and less strenuous Alpine Pond Trail (2 miles [3.2 kilometers] round-trip) from the Chessman Meadow parking area loops above the canyon rim to a little pool, where you can lie in wild grass, gaze up at the clouds, and be content never to move a muscle again.
Utah 143 leads through scenic alpine terrain to the popular winter resort of Brian Head (Chamber of Commerce +1 435 677 2810), where the lifts begin rising at 9,600 feet [2,926 meters], one of the highest bases of any ski area in the United States. Always alert for word of new scenic dirt roads to conquer, mountain bikers also count the town as a prime destination. Over a dozen bi ke trails whiz around 11,307-foot [3,446.4-meter] Brian Head plateau, the second highest elevation in Dixie National Forest.

Bryce Canyon National Park

Sunrise at Bryce Canyon

Photograph © Steven Mangold/Corbis

Like a master artist, erosion achieves different results when working in different mediums. In Bryce Canyon National Park (+1 435 834 5322. Adm. fee), Claron Formation limestone at the edge of the Paunsaugunt Plateau has been cut down 2,000 feet [609.3 meters] into an intricate wilderness of spires, U-shaped amphitheaters, and sawtooth ridges of chalky reds, oranges, yellows, and tans. As you enter the park, but before reaching the entrance station, watch for the 1-mile [1.6-kilometer] drive to Fairyland Point Overlook, a superb panorama of the vertical erosion characterizing Bryce’s 60-million-year-old up-and-down landscape. A short walk from the trailhead leads to the towers and spires.
Six-square-mile [15.5-square-kilometer] Bryce Amphitheater is a must-see. If your time is limited, proceed from Utah 63 to the Visitor Center, pick up a park brochure and map, and continue on 4 miles [6.4 kilometers] to Bryce Point, among the loftiest views of the bowl. A short but steep trail from the Inspiration Point parking lot to upper Inspiration Point features a pair of close-up viewpoints down into the canyon. Nearby Sunset Point is named for the tendency of late afternoon sunlight to boost colors here to an astonishing richness.
Continue south to Farview Point, where you can indeed see far to the east. Natural Bridge viewpoint overlooks a 125-foot-high [38.1-meter-high] stone arch. Towering hoodoos crowd the Agua Canyon viewpoint as if challenging you to butt chests. Far beyond the unruly spires, the Pink Cliffs pose in front of nearly 2-mile-high [3.2-kilometer-high] Navajo Mountain.
You’ve climbed 1,000 feet [304.8 meters] from the time you’ve entered the park to when you reach forested Rainbow Point, a lovely picnic spot at a heart-racing 9,105 feet [2,775.2 meters]. Bristlecone pines, possibly 1,500 years old, perch on the cliffs at Yovimpa Point. If the air is clear, you can see all the way to the Grand Canyon’s North Rim. Directly below, steplike terraces descend through luminous whites, browns, grays, pinks, and reds. The promontory area, known for its amazing acoustics, offers a deep silence.

Long-dead geysers may be responsible for the 67 red and tan spires at Kodachrome Basin State Park (+1 435 679 8562. Adm. fee), about 7 miles [11.3 kilometers] south of Cannonville on Cottonwood Canyon Road. Some geologists believe that sedimentary feldspar and calcite formed in the extinct geysers’ throats and remained after the surrounding softer Entrada sandstone eroded away, leaving “chimneys” rising as high as 156 feet [47.6 meters]. The park’s juniper-shaded campground, set among red rock spires, is one of the region’s most inviting. National Geographic Society visitors proposed the park’s name in 1948 to honor the pioneering brand of color film. If you have time, leave your car at the Panorama Trail parking area and walk the 3-mile [4.8-kilometer] round-trip trail to Ballerina Slipper, a graceful formation standing on point here for eons. For a short gravel-road adventure (if the weather’s dry), continue south about 10 miles [16 kilometers] to Grosvenor Arch, a soaring yellow arc split by a supporting spire and named for NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC magazine’s first full-time editor.
Unless you’re willing to walk (about 2 miles [3.2 kilometers] round-trip), you’ll miss the best of Escalante Petrified Forest State Park (Off Utah 12. +1 435 826 4466. Adm. fee). The most interesting specimens of petrified trees found here lie on a ridge above the campground along the mile-long Petrified Forest Trail and the Sleeping Rainbow Trail looping away from it. Before you march off, grab a brochure at the trailhead; the guide’s interpretive information corresponds to signs posted along the trails. It’s tough going for the first several hundred yards, which take you up 240 feet [173.2 meters] to the top of the Summerville Cliffs. There the trail levels, passing some interesting but fragmentary examples of petrified wood, then inclines into a coulee where the treasure is. Large tree trunks lie here, their crystal hearts exposed, agatized into purples, pinks, reds, yellows, and blues. Why here? In Jurassic times (about 150 million years ago) this was a swampy forest of pinelike conifers surrounded by volcanoes. Geologists suspect an eruption entombed these trees under soggy ash (silica), the basic recipe for petrifaction.

Escalante
Entering the old Mormon settlement of Escalante, watch for the Escalante Inter-Agency Information Office (755 W. Main St. +1 435 826 5499. Closed weekends Nov.–mid-March), a library of advice on where to drive, hike, and camp in the sparsely settled high desert plateau and Escalante River region.
In nearby Boulder, from about A.D. 1050 to 1200, Anasazi farmers occupied an 87-room village preserved and partially reconstructed at Anasazi State Park (+1 435 335 7308. Adm. fee). This was one of the largest known Anasazi communities west of the Colorado River. Ruined walls outside show what excavation revealed; reconstructed dwellings allow you to enter the dim domestic world of the vanished people.
Few stretches along this drive are more exhilarating than Utah 12’s steep climb from Boulder partway up onto the 10,000-foot [3,048-meter]-high Aquarius Plateau, covered with pinyon and sagebrush, and one of the continent’s highest. The 2,300-foot [701-meter] ascent begins in the upper reaches of the Sonoran Desert, passes through evergreen forest where in autumn aspen shimmer like jets of yellow flame, and levels out in verdant subalpine bowls locked in a dreamy solitude of sunlight and silence.

Capitol Dome area, Capitol Reef National Park

Photograph © Danny Lehman

Dreamlike is how many remember their first visit to Capitol Reef National Park (+1 435 425 3791. Adm. fee), a lordly array of colossal cliffs rising in the isolated Waterpocket Fold—a 100-mile-long [160.9-kilometer-long] geological crease in the earth’s crust running nearly to Lake Powell and named for the many rainwater-filled basins between its two parallel ridges.
Continue past the park’s west entrance toward the eroded cliffs of the fold (the drive eventually reaches the Fremont River). At the Panorama Point pullout, follow the unpaved Goosenecks Overlook spur road south to a parking area, where a short, easy footpath to Sunset Point ends at a broad panorama of the park’s crown jewel—the towering, richly tinted Capitol Reef section of the massive uplift.

Fruita
Stop at the Visitor Center (6 miles [9.7 kilometers] from west park entrance) at Fruita, established in the 1880s by Mormon settlers who diverted river water to irrigate the fruit orchards still growing here on fields originally used by the Fremont people. Exhibits and a short slide show provide geological and historical background, demystifying the phenomenal 60-million-year-old eroded monocline looming above.
The 25-mile [40.2-kilometer] round-trip Scenic Drive, south along Capitol Reef’s craggy west face, traces a route first used by Indians and later by bandits seeking refuge in its narrow canyons. Butch Cassidy reputedly hid out in Grand Wash Canyon, where a 1.75-mile [2.8-kilometer] trail from the parking area climbs to Cassidy Arch on the cliff above. Another footpath, dramatically scenic and easy to walk, descends 2.25 miles [3.6 kilometers] along Grand Wash, squeezing through a narrow cleft to reach the Fremont River.
The Scenic Drive wriggles 2 miles [3.2 kilometers] into narrow Capitol Gorge. A mile-long [1.6-kilometer-long] trail from the parking area gently slopes into the canyon, where inscriptions left by settlers and early travelers are carved into cliff walls. For more rock art, backtrack to Fruita and continue east on Utah 24 to the roadside petroglyphs viewpoint. You’ll need binoculars to bring the Fremont Indian rock art up close. The Fremont people lived here from about A.D. 700 to 1350, leaving behind irrigation ditches, granaries, and pit houses. The carved images depict humanlike figures and bighorn sheep, among other designs.

Fremont Indian State Park
Continue northwest on Utah 24 to I-70. Fremont hunters once ranged widely across this high country, but their seminomadic life left fewer traces than did the settled life of their Anasazi contemporaries. Piecing together the puzzle is the objective of a fascinating museum at Fremont Indian State Park (11550 W. Clear Creek Canyon Rd. +1 435 5217 4631 or 800 662 8898. Adm. fee for museum) in Sevier. The site of Five Fingers Knoll Village, the largest Fremont settlement yet discovered, lies beneath nearby I-70. Archaeologists arrived ahead of the bulldozers, rescuing a cultural treasury of pots, grinding stones, stone points, and myriad other items scattered among 60 pit houses and 40 granaries. The park’s museum displays the most significant items in a prehistoric collection rated among Utah’s best. Picture windows look out on rock walls incised with fanciful petroglyphs.

Old Cove Fort

Hinckley cabin, Old Cove Fort

Photograph © Danny Lehman

Proof of Mormon isolation (and near autonomy) in Utah’s early territorial days is Old Cove Fort (I-70 just NE of I-15 junction. +1 435 438 5547). The burly lava rock stronghold was built by the Mormons in 1867 as a sanctuary for travelers between the short-lived, Mormon-designated territorial capital in Fillmore 30 miles [48.3 kilometers] north and church-founded Beaver 20 miles [32.2 kilometers] south. The forlorn garrison and its outbuildings have been refurbished to their original condition, every detail precisely as it was between 1867 and 1877.
The main attraction in Beaver are the 109 buildings on the National Register of Historic Places that line its old main street and residential neighborhoods. The handsome Greek Revival Beaver County Courthouse and Historical Museum (90 E. Center St. +1 435 438 2975. June-Aug. Tues.-Sat.) recounts the turbulent 1870s and 1880s, when a 60-million-dollar silver strike in the San Francisco Mountains brought hundreds of rowdy “gentile” newcomers who clashed with Beaver’s staid Mormon founders. The community center across the street was once the town’s opera house.

Parowan Gap Petroglyphs
Nearly ten centuries ago, Sevier-Fremont and other Native Americans began to chip rock art into an eroded corridor notching the Red Hills northeast of Cedar City. They left an enchanting gallery of geometric designs and mind-bending depictions of humans and animals known as the Parowan Gap Petroglyphs. Look for Gap Road about 26 miles [41.8 kilometers] south of Minersville, between Lost Springs and Horse Hollow Roads. The Fremont’s thousand-year-old message lies only 2.5 miles [4 kilometers] east on the gravel road, a six-minute journey to a life-long memory.