Alabama Hills

Rounded golden granite under the Sierra wall, and Hollywoods oldest outdoor set.

Alpine Loop Summit

The 8,000-foot high point of the Alpine Loop, face to face with Mount Timpanogos

Alta Ski Area

One of America's oldest and snowiest ski areas — ski-only, fiercely independent, and built on an old silver camp.

Amargosa Opera House

A dancer painted her own audience on the walls of a desert hall and performed for them for forty years.

Amboy

Roy's Motel and Cafe and its 1959 neon boomerang, the most photographed lonely stop on Route 66.

Amboy Crater

A near-perfect black cinder cone off Route 66, one of California's youngest volcanoes and a National Natural Landmark.

American West Heritage Center

A living history farm spanning 160 acres of Cache Valley

Anasazi State Park Museum

Ruins of a 900-year-old Ancestral Puebloan village

Ancient Bristlecone Pine Forest

Trees older than the pyramids, growing on white dolomite at ten thousand feet.

Antelope Canyon

Tsé bighánílíní — where the water runs through the rock

Antelope Island State Park

A rugged island in the Great Salt Lake with free-roaming bison

Anza-Borrego Desert State Park

Six hundred thousand acres of badlands, slot canyons, and palm oases, and the biggest state park in California.

Arches National Park

Over 2,000 natural stone arches in one extraordinary landscape

Aspen Grove

The mountain-base trailhead for Mount Timpanogos and Stewart Falls

Austin

A silver boomtown that hit ten thousand and fell to under two hundred — the living ghost town at the high middle of US-50

Badwater Basin

The lowest ground in North America, a salt pan 282 feet below sea level under two miles of mountain.

Bald Mountain Pass

The highest point on the Mirror Lake Highway at 10,715 feet

Baldwin Lake Ecological Reserve

Pebble plains occur in this valley and nowhere else on earth, and the flowers on them are small enough that you have to lie down.

Barstow

The Mojave's rail-and-road hinge, where the Santa Fe yards and Route 66 meet at the Casa del Desierto Harvey House.

Bear Lake

The Caribbean of the Rockies — a turquoise lake straddling the Utah-Idaho border

Bear Lake Raspberry Shakes

Legendary raspberry milkshakes from locally grown berries

Bear Valley Dam

Big Bear Lake is an irrigation reservoir first, and in 1977 the town had to buy the dam to keep water in its own view.

Beatty

The town that water built and water kept — the Bullfrog boom's lone survivor, now Nevada's gateway to Death Valley, with wild burros wandering Main Street.

Beaver

A charming main street town with surprisingly good food

Beaver Mountain Ski Area

A family-owned ski hill that has been run by the same family since 1939

Berlin-Ichthyosaur State Park

A gold camp frozen in "arrested decay" since 1911, beside a quarry of fifty-foot ichthyosaurs left in the rock where they died — the Silver Trails' long exhale into deep time.

Best Friends Animal Sanctuary

The largest no-kill animal sanctuary in the United States

Big Bear Solar Observatory

A reservoir dug for orange groves turned out to be one of the steadiest places on the continent to look at the sun.

Big Bend Recreation Area

A lazy loop of the Colorado with a sandy beach, riverside camping, and a well-known bouldering field

Big Rock Candy Mountain

The real mountain that inspired the famous hobo folk song

Bingham Canyon Mine

The largest man-made excavation on Earth

Bisbee

Queen of the Copper Camps — and the deportation it tried to forget

Bishop

The Eastern Sierras working capital, and the home of the Nüümü who were traded out of their own valley.

Bodie State Historic Park

A gold town of ten thousand left exactly as it emptied, held in arrested decay at 8,375 feet.

Bombay Beach

The lowest town in America: a drowned resort turned open-air art colony, 223 feet below sea level.

Bonneville Salt Flats

A blindingly white desert where land speed records are born

Borrego Springs

A dark-sky town ringed by state park, with 130 metal beasts loose in the desert around it.

Boulder

One of the last places in America to receive paved road access

Boulder Mountain

A 50-mile forested plateau at 11,000 feet with 80 alpine lakes

Boulder Mountain Lodge

An ecotourism lodge and James Beard-honored grill at the heart of Scenic Byway 12.

Brian Head

Utah's highest town — a ski-and-bike base camp at the top of Parowan Canyon

Bridal Veil Falls

A dramatic double waterfall cascading 607 feet into Provo Canyon

Brighton Resort

The Salt Lake Valley's longtime local ski hill — big snow, lots of night skiing, and high-speed quads to everything.

Bruce's Beach

Willa and Charles Bruce ran a seaside resort here for Black families until the city took the land in 1924. It came back in 2022.

Bryce Canyon Lodge

A 1925 National Historic Landmark perched on the canyon rim

Bryce Canyon National Park

The largest collection of hoodoos on Earth

Burr Trail Road

A jaw-dropping backcountry road through slot canyons to Capitol Reef

Butch Cassidy Boyhood Home

The restored Circleville cabin where the West's most famous outlaw spent his teens

Cajon Pass

The gap the San Andreas tore between two mountain ranges, and the doorway every westbound traveler has used for two centuries.

Calico Ghost Town

An 1881 silver boomtown in the calico-colored hills, saved and rebuilt by the founder of Knott's Berry Farm.

California Citrus State Historic Park

A state park that is still a working orange grove — the last big piece of Riverside's citrus landscape left standing.

California Trail Interpretive Center

A free, surprisingly ambitious BLM museum of the overland crossing — eight miles west of Elko, on the trail itself, where the California Trail met the Hastings Cutoff that doomed the Donner Party.

Campo de Cahuenga

The treaty that ended the fighting in California was signed on this ground, and the building it was signed in is now under the boulevard.

Cannonville

Gateway to Kodachrome Basin and the Grand Staircase

Canyon de Chelly

Tséyiʼ — five thousand years, the Long Walk, and the road home

Canyon Overlook Trail

A short, exposed hike just east of the tunnel to a thousand-foot view down into Zion Canyon

Canyonlands National Park - Island in the Sky

A flat-topped mesa with views that stretch to infinity

Capitol Reef National Park

Utah's most underrated national park — a 100-mile wrinkle in the Earth

Carlin & the Carlin Trend

The small railroad town west of Elko that sits beside the largest gold complex on earth — and, because the gold is invisible, shows you almost none of it.

Carson City

The capital one man platted before there was a territory—where the Comstock's silver became coin at a U.S. Mint and a small sandstone city that has run Nevada ever since

Casa Grande Ruins

The Huhugam Great House — and the country's first archaeological reserve

Casa Malpais

The Mogollon great house on the lava, and the catacombs sealed back shut

Cascade Springs

Seven million gallons a day welling up through travertine terraces and clear pools

Castle Valley

A stunning valley dominated by the iconic Castleton Tower

Cathedral Gorge State Park

A drained ancient lakebed eroded into buff-colored spires and narrow slot "caves" — one of Nevada's first state parks, and the gentle, otherworldly counterweight to the Silver Trails' ghost towns.

Cave Rock / De'ek Wadapush

One of the most sacred places of the Wašiw—the Standing Gray Rock, a worn volcano the highway was blasted through and climbers bolted for sport, now closed and quiet again after the Washoe's long fight to protect it

Cedar Breaks National Monument

A 2,000-foot-deep amphitheater of vivid orange and red rock

Checkerboard Mesa

A 900-foot dome of Navajo sandstone scored into a natural grid, near Zion's east entrance

Chiricahua National Monument

The Land of Standing-Up Rocks — Cochise and Geronimo's stronghold

Cholla Cactus Garden

Ten acres of teddybear cholla that look soft and are anything but, at the seam between two deserts.

Chollar Mine

A real Comstock silver mine you can still walk into—four hundred feet of original timbered tunnel under C Street, where the work that built a state was done by hand, in the dark

Cisco

A railroad-and-oil ghost town at the east end of UT-128, later a backdrop for "Thelma & Louise"

Cleveland-Lloyd Dinosaur Quarry

The densest concentration of Jurassic-era dinosaur bones ever found

Colorado Street Bridge

Beaux-Arts concrete arches curving 150 feet above the Arroyo Seco, opened in 1913 and later a link in Route 66.

Columbia State Historic Park

The Gem of the Southern Mines, still open for business on a car-free Gold Rush main street.

Coral Pink Sand Dunes State Park

Sweeping dunes of coral-colored sand framed by red cliffs

Corona Arch Trail

A massive arch you can hike to without a national park fee

Cove Fort

A beautifully restored 1867 pioneer fort at the crossroads of two interstates

Crystal Geyser

A cold-water geyser that erupts from an abandoned oil well

Dantes View

A 5,475-foot balcony on the Black Mountains crest with Badwater a vertical mile below.

Dead Horse Point State Park

A 2,000-foot sheer drop overlooking the Colorado River

Deer Valley

A ski-only luxury resort above Park City, now in the middle of the largest expansion in U.S. ski history.

Devil's Kitchen

A pocket of red-rock hoodoos high in the green Wasatch — a "little Bryce Canyon"

Devils Postpile National Monument

A wall of hexagonal basalt columns with a glacier-polished top, and a 101-foot waterfall downstream.

Dewey Bridge

All that remains of Utah's longest suspension bridge — bare towers and cables over the Colorado River

Dinosaur National Monument

A wall of 1,500 dinosaur bones still embedded in the rock where they were found

Doble

Three men with money reopened this mine and all three failed. The town is named after the second one.

Domínguez Rancho Adobe

The first Spanish land grant in California contained the whole harbor, and in 1846 fifty Californio lancers turned back three hundred Marines on it.

Donner Memorial State Park

Where the Donner Party spent the winter of 1846, marked by cabin stone and a monument built to a remembered snow depth.

Donner Summit Tunnels

Granite bored by hand at fourteen inches a day, by Chinese crews the country spent a century forgetting.

Drum Barracks

The Union Army built its Southern California headquarters in a county that had voted against Lincoln two to one, and stabled the Army camels here.

Edge of the Cedars State Park Museum

An Ancestral Puebloan ruin you can climb down into

Elko

The railroad built it, cattle made it, and gold keeps it — the working capital of northeast Nevada, a frontier cow town that never got around to becoming a relic.

Ely

The copper town and crossroads at the east end of the loneliest road — home of the Ghost Train and the gateway to Great Basin

Emerald Bay State Park

A glacial fjord on Tahoe's west shore with the lake's only island and a Scandinavian house at the water.

Emigration Canyon

The final stretch of trail the Mormon pioneers took into the valley

Empire Mine State Historic Park

The oldest, deepest, richest hard-rock gold mine in California, with 367 miles of flooded tunnels underneath.

Ensign Peak

A short hike to the spot where Brigham Young surveyed the valley

Ephraim

Utah's Little Denmark and the home of Snow College

Ephraim Co-op

The 1871 cooperative store that outlived the economy it was built to replace

Escalante

The town that gave Grand Staircase-Escalante its name

Escalante Interagency Visitor Center

Your essential stop before heading into the backcountry

Escalante Petrified Forest State Park

Walk among 150-million-year-old stone trees

Eureka

The Pittsburgh of the West, reborn — the best-preserved town on the loneliest road, with an 1880 opera house and a working 1879 courthouse

Extraterrestrial Highway

Ninety-eight lonely miles of State Route 375 past the back roads to Area 51 — with the Little A'Le'Inn in Rachel, the legend of the Black Mailbox, and some of the darkest skies in the country.

Factory Butte

A moonscape monolith rising from Mancos Shale badlands west of Hanksville.

Fairview

The north gate of the Heritage Highway, home to a near-complete Ice Age mammoth

Fantasy Canyon

Impossibly shaped rock formations that look like alien sculptures

Fisher Towers

Towering dark red pinnacles rising 900 feet from the desert floor

Fishlake National Forest

Home to Pando — the largest living organism on Earth

Flagstaff

The ponderosa town where they found Pluto and saved the dark

Flaming Gorge Dam

A 502-foot concrete dam with a free guided tour inside

Flaming Gorge National Recreation Area

A turquoise reservoir carved into blazing red canyon walls

Forrest Gump Point

The exact spot where Forrest stopped running

Fort Apache Historic Park

The Army fort that became a boarding school — and came back to the Apache

Fremont Indian State Park

The largest known Fremont Indian village ever discovered

Fremont Street

Glitter Gulch — the neon canyon where Las Vegas actually began

Fruita Historic District

A pioneer orchard oasis in the red-rock heart of Capitol Reef.

Furnace Creek

The valley hub, the hottest air temperature ever officially recorded, and the Timbisha village that was here first.

Genoa

Nevada's oldest town—a California Trail trading post and Carson Valley ranch country that came eight years before the silver and quietly outlasted it

Gifford Homestead

A pioneer homestead famous for its fresh-baked pies

Gilgal Sculpture Garden

A surreal and eccentric sculpture garden hidden in a residential neighborhood

Glenbrook & Spooner Summit

Lake Tahoe's east shore, where the basin was logged nearly clean to timber the Comstock—the forest that paid for the silver, and the century it has spent growing back

Goblin Valley State Park

Thousands of mushroom-shaped rock formations in a Martian landscape

Goffs

A near-ghost on the pre-1931 Route 66 alignment, keeper of a 1914 desert schoolhouse and a WWII Army camp.

Golden Spike National Historical Park

Where East met West — the spot that connected America by rail

Goldfield

Once the largest city in Nevada, now a few hundred souls — the purest boom-and-bust in the West, with a castle courthouse still in use, a grand hotel dark since the war, and a desert full of upended cars.

Goosenecks State Park

A 1,000-foot-deep river canyon with impossibly tight meanders

Graber Olive House

The oldest business in Ontario, a cannery of five hundred brine vats — shut since the pandemic and in foreclosure.

Grafton Ghost Town

A photogenic ghost town used in the film Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid

Grand Canyon (South Rim)

A mile down through two billion years — and eleven nations' ground

Grand Canyon Caverns

The largest dry cavern in the country, 210 feet under Route 66 — a Cold War fallout shelter, the deepest hotel room in America, and a Hualapai burial place the tourists once mistook for a sideshow.

Grandstaff Canyon

A shaded creek-bottom walk to Morning Glory, the sixth-longest natural rock span in the country

Great Basin National Park

Nevada's only national park — caves below, the oldest trees on earth above, the darkest skies overhead

Great Hunt Panel

Nine Mile Canyon's most famous petroglyph — the rare rock art panel people feel they can read.

Great Salt Lake

The largest saltwater lake in the Western Hemisphere

Green River

A small desert town famous for its melons and river adventures

Grimes Point

Hundreds of desert-varnished boulders carved over eight thousand years — the Great Basin's most accessible rock art

Grosvenor Arch

A massive double arch named for the National Geographic Society president

Gunnison

Sanpete's southern hub, home to Utah's oldest operating theater

Hackberry General Store

Looks like a junkyard, is a shrine — the 1934 store an artist brought back from the dead, and the Route 66 stop that inspired Fillmore in Cars.

Hanksville

The town where Earth ends and Mars begins

Harada House

The 1884 cottage a Japanese American family bought in their children's names, and kept in court.

Hardware Ranch Wildlife Management Area

A winter elk feeding ground where you can take a sleigh ride among hundreds of elk

Heard Museum

The Native Southwest, told in the first person

Heber Valley Railroad

A vintage steam train ride through a stunning mountain valley

Hells Backbone Grill

A farm-to-table pioneer in the middle of nowhere

Hells Backbone Road

A 38-mile gravel detour with a 1,500-foot drop on either side

Henrieville

A blink-and-you-will-miss-it ranching hamlet

Henry Mountains

The last range on the map — and America's wildest bison herd.

Hickison Petroglyphs

Western Shoshone rock art cut into soft white tuff at a 6,500-foot summit — the easiest rock art to meet on the loneliest road

Hickman Bridge Trail

A natural stone bridge framing Capitol Reefs layered cliffs

Hill Aerospace Museum

Over 90 military aircraft displayed indoors and on the tarmac

Holbrook

A Santa Fe railroad town once too tough for women and churches, now the seat of Navajo County, gateway to the Petrified Forest, and home to the concrete teepees of the Wigwam Motel.

Hole N the Rock

A 5,000-square-foot home carved inside a massive sandstone boulder

Homestead Crater

A hidden geothermal spring inside a 55-foot limestone dome

Hoover Dam

The 726-foot Depression-era colossus that tamed the Colorado and made Las Vegas possible

Hurricane Canal Trail

The hand-dug canal that built Hurricane, now a walking trail blasted into the Virgin River gorge

Hyrum State Park

A family-friendly reservoir at the mouth of Blacksmith Fork Canyon

International Peace Gardens

A hidden garden where 28 countries are represented in miniature

Jarbidge

The end of the road, twice over — Nevada's most isolated town, deep in a canyon on the Idaho line, where the West's last gold rush and its last stagecoach robbery both played out.

Jardine Juniper

One of the oldest living trees in the world at over 1,500 years old

Jerome

The billion-dollar copper camp clinging to Cleopatra Hill — now the largest ghost town in America

John Wesley Powell River History Museum

The only U.S. museum devoted to river history, on the bank of the Green River.

Jordanelle State Park

A sapphire reservoir nestled between the Wasatch and Uinta mountains

Joshua Tree National Park

Where the high Mojave meets the low Colorado, among monzogranite piles and a yucca that is not a tree.

Kaiser Steel Mill Site

The mill that made Fontana a steel town, gave the country Kaiser Permanente, and drew a color line at Base Line Road.

Kamas

A ranching town and gateway to the Uinta Mountains

Kanab

Little Hollywood — where hundreds of Western movies were filmed

Kayenta

Tó Dínéeshzheeʼ — Monument Valley's gateway town and keeper of the Code Talkers' story.

Keller Peak Fire Lookout

For ninety-eight years it watched this forest for smoke. In September 2024 a fire took it, and the steel frame is what is left.

Kelso Depot

A grand 1920s Mission Revival rail depot standing alone in the deep Mojave, now the preserve's visitor center.

Kelso Dunes

The Mojave's largest dune field, and one of the few places on Earth where the sand booms underfoot.

Kingman

The working hub of Route 66 in Arizona — a railroad town named for a surveyor, Andy Devine's hometown, and the last real stop before the road's two wildest endings.

Kiva Koffeehouse

A hand-built cliffside coffee shop with canyon views

Kodachrome Basin State Park

A valley of 67 stone chimneys rising from the desert floor

Kolob Canyons

The quiet, uncrowded back door to Zion National Park

Korean Friendship Bell

Seventeen tons of bronze given by Korea for the American bicentennial, on the bluff above the harbor its troops shipped out from.

Lagoon Amusement Park

A beloved family amusement park operating since 1886

Lake Arrowhead Village

A reservoir that lost in court and became a resort — and the 1920s village that made its name was burned down on purpose.

Lake Gregory

A New Deal dam built by a Redlands orange grower, for the opposite reason to every other lake on this mountain.

Lake Mead National Recreation Area

The largest reservoir in the country — and its most legible drought gauge

Lamoille Canyon & the Ruby Mountains

The great exception to Nevada's sagebrush monotony — a glacier-carved canyon and a wall of eleven-thousand-foot granite peaks an hour southeast of Elko, fairly called the state's Alps.

Las Vegas Strip

Four and a quarter miles of engineered spectacle — the most famous street in America (and it isn't in Las Vegas)

Lehi Roller Mills

The flour mill from the movie Footloose

Leonis Adobe

Miguel Leonis left his estate to relatives in France and called Espíritu Chijulla his housekeeper; she spent sixteen years proving in court that she was his wife.

Liberty Park

Salt Lake Citys beloved 80-acre urban park since 1882

Logan

A vibrant college town tucked into a stunning mountain valley

Logan Canyon

A winding National Scenic Byway through limestone cliffs and alpine forest

Los Encinos State Historic Park

A spring that never stopped running, the village it fed for thousands of years, and the rancho that took the ground away.

Lost City Museum

The Ancestral Puebloan metropolis Lake Mead drowned — and the museum that saved what it could

Lower Calf Creek Falls

A 126-foot waterfall hidden in a desert canyon

Malakoff Diggins State Historic Park

A canyon washed out of a mountain by water cannon, and the lawsuit that ended hydraulic mining.

Manti

Sanpete's first settlement, crowned by an 1888 oolite temple

Manti Temple

A striking pioneer-era temple crowning a hilltop above the Sanpete Valley

Manti-La Sal National Forest

Alpine peaks rising above red rock desert

Manzanar National Historic Site

A concentration camp on twice-taken ground, where the United States imprisoned more than eleven thousand of its own.

March Field Air Museum

A century of the same field, still working — the museum parked outside the fence of a base that has flown since 1918.

Marshall Gold Discovery State Historic Park

The tailrace at Coloma where a carpenter found gold in January 1848 and the world came running.

Mayfield

Gateway to Twelve Mile Canyon and the Skyline Drive high country

McConkie Ranch Petroglyphs

Massive Fremont-era rock art panels on private ranch land open to visitors

Mentryville and Pico Canyon

A company town in a canyon, and a mile and a half further up the road, the well that started the California oil industry.

Mesquite Flat Sand Dunes

Fourteen square miles of dunes near Stovepipe Wells, and the easiest sand in the park to reach.

Mexican Hat Rock

A perfectly balanced sombrero-shaped rock formation

Midway

A Swiss-inspired village with a geothermal crater you can snorkel in

Mirror Lake

A pristine alpine lake reflecting the Uinta peaks like glass

Mission San Fernando Rey de España

The seventeenth Alta California mission, founded at the Tataviam village of Achoicominga, with the largest adobe building in the state standing beside it.

Mission San Gabriel Arcangel

The fourth Alta California mission, built on Tongva land with Tongva labor, rebuilt after arson and now telling that story straight.

Mission San Xavier del Bac

The White Dove of the Desert — the finest Spanish Baroque church in the country

Moab

The adventure capital of the American Southwest

Moki Dugway

A heart-pounding series of switchbacks carved into a cliff face

Mono Lake

A saline lake older than most of the Sierra, with tufa towers and a water fight it eventually won.

Montezuma Castle

A five-story Sinagua cliff dwelling, misnamed for an emperor who was never here

Monument Valley Navajo Tribal Park

The most iconic Western landscape on Earth

Mossy Cave Trail

A hidden waterfall and ice cave just off the highway

Mount Baldy

Dzil Ligai Si'an, the sacred White Mountain, and the summit you stop short of

Mount Carmel Junction

The crossroads where the road to Zion meets the highway to Bryce

Mount Charleston & the Spring Mountains

A nearly 12,000-foot sky island 35 miles from the Strip — alpine forest above the Mojave

Mount Nebo

At 11,928 feet, the highest and southernmost peak in the Wasatch Range

Mount Pleasant

A National Register Main Street and Utah's oldest boarding school

Mount Rubidoux

The mountain all of Riverside walks — and the half-acre at the summit the city sold rather than go to court.

Mount Whitney

At 14,505 feet, the highest summit in the contiguous United States, eighty miles from the lowest point.

Natural Bridges National Monument

Three massive natural bridges carved by ancient streams

Natural History Museum of Utah

A world-class museum built into the foothills above Salt Lake City

Nebo Loop Summit

The byway's 9,300-foot high point, with Utah Valley spread out below

Needles

Route 66's Colorado River gateway into California, anchored by El Garces, the Harvey House that Mojave hands built.

Nephi

A quiet ranching town at the foot of Mount Nebo

Nevada City

Gaslamps, brick storefronts, and the Nisenan who are still fighting to be recognized on their own ground.

Newspaper Rock State Historical Monument

One of the largest known panels of ancient petroglyphs in the Southwest

Nine Mile Canyon

The longest art gallery in the world — thousands of ancient rock art panels

Oak Creek Canyon

The switchback drive from red rock to ponderosa on State Route 89A

Oak Flat

Chi'chil Bildagoteel — the Apache sacred ground a copper mine is set to swallow

Oak of the Golden Dream

Gold was found in California here in 1842, six years before Sutter's Mill, and the oak it was found under is still standing.

Oatman

A gold camp in the Black Mountains that outlived its mines, now run by wild burros — reached by the wildest switchbacks left on Route 66, and named for a history worth telling straight.

Ogden Union Station

A grand 1924 train depot turned museum complex

Old Las Vegas Mormon Fort State Historic Park

The 1855 adobe fort where Las Vegas began — a mile and a world away from the neon

Onion Creek

A scenic backroad that fords the same creek more than two dozen times beneath the spires of Fisher Towers

Onyx Summit

The highest pass any state highway crosses in Southern California, at the top of the long way into Big Bear.

Original McDonald's Site

The corner where two brothers invented fast food, now an unofficial museum the corporation has never blessed.

Owens Lake

Patsiata, the lake Los Angeles drank, and the most expensive dust in America.

Palisade State Park

A pioneer-built lake turned central Utah's favorite state park

Palm Springs

Cahuilla homeland, checkerboard reservation, mid-century playground, and the square mile the city burned.

Panguitch

A well-preserved pioneer town and gateway to Bryce Canyon

Panguitch Lake

A Blue Ribbon trout lake at 8,400 feet on the Patchwork Parkway

Park City

Silver built it. Snow saved it.

Park City Main Street

A historic mining town turned world-class ski and film festival destination

Park City Mountain

The largest ski resort in the United States, grown straight out of a 19th-century silver town.

Parowan Gap Petroglyphs

An ancient rock art gallery hidden in a desert canyon

Payson Lakes

Three alpine lakes in the pines, twelve miles up Payson Canyon

Peach Springs

The capital of the Hualapai Nation — the People of the Tall Pines — on Route 66 at the rim of the Grand Canyon, gateway to Grand Canyon West and the only road to the Colorado's floor.

Petrified Forest National Park

Two hundred million years turned to stone — and a Route 66 ghost

Phoenix

The fifth-largest US city, built on the canals of a thousand-year-old one

Pioche

The silver camp that, by legend, out-killed the Old West — Boot Hill's boots-on graves, the graft-ridden Million-Dollar Courthouse, and an aerial tramway still slung over Main Street.

Pioneer Oil Refinery

The first commercially successful refinery in the West, built in 1876 to take the crude coming down the pipeline from Pico Canyon.

Pioneertown

A Western movie set built in 1946 that people moved into and never left.

Planes of Fame Air Museum

On the field where the country smelted its surplus warplanes — and about thirty of the aircraft here still fly.

Point Fermin Lighthouse

The first light into San Pedro Bay, lit in 1874 by two sisters, dark since Pearl Harbor, on a bluff that is still sliding.

Point Vicente

Volunteers have counted the gray whale migration from this bluff for four decades, over water where shore whalers nearly finished the same herds.

Potash Road Dinosaur Tracks

Dinosaur footprints embedded in a cliff face along the Colorado River

Powder Mountain

The largest ski resort in the United States by acreage — a famously uncrowded "PowMow" now remaking itself under Netflix's Reed Hastings.

Prehistoric Museum at USU Eastern

A small-town museum punching way above its weight in dinosaur science

Prescott

Arizona's first territorial capital — Whiskey Row, the courthouse square, and a mile-high pine town

Price

A gritty coal mining town with a surprisingly excellent dinosaur museum

Puvungna

The Acjachemen and Tongva place of creation: twenty-two acres of open ground on a university campus, still not in the hands of its people.

Pyramid Lake / Koqyoqe Panunadu

The Numu's sacred lake at the end of the Truckee—homeland of the cui-ui eaters, site of the 1860 war, and a century-long fight to keep the river that the silver towns dammed from draining it dry

Racetrack Playa

A dead-flat lakebed where rocks leave trails behind them, twenty-seven miles down a tire-shredding road.

Red Butte Garden

A 100-acre botanical garden with panoramic valley views

Red Canyon

A blazing red gateway carved by water and wind

Red Rock Canyon National Conservation Area

The Mojave wilderness that begins where Las Vegas ends — striped sandstone cliffs and a 13-mile scenic loop

Reno

The river crossing the Comstock needed, made a city by the railroad—then reinvented as divorce capital, gambling town, and now tech hub: the Biggest Little City in the World

Rhyolite

The most complete ghost town in Nevada — a stone city with an opera house and a marble-stepped bank that rose and died inside a decade, now the most photographed ruin in the West.

Riverside Chinatown Site

Riverside's second Chinatown — an empty lot on purpose, with eighty percent of it still underground.

Ruby Lake National Wildlife Refuge

The desert's last thing you'd expect — a vast spring-fed marsh at the foot of the Ruby Mountains, one of the remotest refuges in the Lower 48 and a crossroads for two flyways of migrating birds.

Ruby Valley & Newe Sogobia

The valley where the Western Shoshone signed an 1863 treaty that ceded no land — and the heart of Newe Sogobia, a homeland the Newe say was never for sale.

Ruth Lake

A hidden alpine gem reached by a short trail through wildflower meadows

Sacramento

The Gold Rush river port that became the state capital, and jacked itself ten feet into the air to stop drowning.

Saguaro National Park

The giant cactus, and the O'odham who count it as kin

Salt Lake City

Utah's capital and largest city — where the Wasatch Range meets the Great Salt Lake.

Salt River Canyon

US-60's switchback plunge into the gorge that divides two Apache nations

Saltair

A haunting lakeside resort with a storied past

Salton Sea

California's largest lake, made by accident in 1905 and shrinking ever since.

Salvation Mountain

One man, thirty years, half a million gallons of donated paint, and a hill that says God is Love.

Samak Smokehouse

A rustic roadside smokehouse serving legendary smoked meats

San Francisco Peaks

The sacred mountain of the west — 12,633 feet, and a live argument

San Gorgonio Mountain

The highest ground in Southern California, and the only summit down here that stands clear above the trees.

San Rafael Swell

A massive dome of exposed rock layers with slot canyons and natural bridges

Sand Harbor

The crown of Lake Tahoe's Nevada shore—car-sized granite boulders standing in water so clear the boats above them seem to float on air, on a beach the Washoe kept for thousands of summers

Sand Mountain

Nevada's largest dune — a 600-foot mountain of singing sand, a buried Pony Express station, and a butterfly found nowhere else

Santa Monica Pier

Where the Mother Road runs out of continent, and where the End of the Trail sign gives the drive somewhere to finish.

Scipio

A tiny crossroads town where I-15 meets the old highway

Sedona

Red-rock skyline, Little Hollywood, and the town Sedona Schnebly gave her name to

Seligman

The town that refused to die when the interstate went around it — a barber's crusade made this the Birthplace of Historic Route 66, and the reason the Mother Road still runs.

Sheep Creek Canyon Geological Loop

A drive through twisted and upturned rock layers spanning 600 million years

Sherman Institute & the Sherman Indian Museum

The federal Indian boarding school Riverside lobbied to get — still a school today, its 1902 building now a museum.

Show Low

The Rim-country town a losing hand of cards named

Skyline Drive

A hundred miles of dirt along the 10,000-foot crest of the Wasatch Plateau

SkyPark at Santa's Village

The Christmas park that opened six weeks before Disneyland, and franchised itself on advice from the McDonald brothers.

Snow Canyon State Park

Red and white sandstone cliffs with ancient lava flows

Snowbasin

One of the country's oldest ski areas and a 2002 Olympic downhill venue — world-class terrain that somehow still skis uncrowded.

Snowbird

The aerial-tram resort of Little Cottonwood Canyon, with steep terrain, deep snow, and one of the longest seasons in the country.

Solitude Mountain Resort

The uncrowded, Alterra-owned resort at the head of Big Cottonwood Canyon, with Honeycomb Canyon's bowls and a quiet village base.

Spiral Jetty

Robert Smithsons iconic land art masterpiece on the Great Salt Lake

Spring City

An entire pioneer town preserved on the National Register

Spring Mountain Ranch State Park

A spring-fed green oasis under the red Wilson Cliffs — and a roll call of colorful owners

Springdale

Zion's south-entrance gateway town, wedged between the Watchman and the Virgin River

St. Francis Dam Disaster Site

The dam failed just before midnight on March 12, 1928, and the flood ran fifty miles down the canyon to the sea.

St. George Dinosaur Discovery Site at Johnson Farm

Real dinosaur footprints preserved in ancient sandstone

Steinaker State Park

A warm-water reservoir popular for swimming in the desert heat

Sterling

A highway hamlet and the doorway to Palisade State Park

Stewart Indian School

The federal boarding school that took Great Basin children from 1890 to 1980 to erase their cultures—its student-built stone campus now a tribally-guided museum telling the story in alumni voices

Sundance Mountain Resort

Robert Redford's intimate, arts-minded ski resort on the slopes of Mount Timpanogos, in the North Fork of Provo Canyon.

Sunset Crater Volcano

The volcano northern Arizona watched erupt, around 1085

Superstition Mountains

The volcanic range that holds the Lost Dutchman legend — and outlasts it

Taliesin West

Frank Lloyd Wright's desert masterwork, grown from the ground it stands on

Temple Square

The spiritual and architectural heart of Salt Lake City

Terminal Island and Furusato

Three thousand Japanese Americans built a village here they called Furusato, and in February 1942 were given forty-eight hours to leave it.

Thanksgiving Point

A massive complex with dinosaur bones, gardens, and a curiosity museum

The Apache Trail

The 1904 road built to raise Roosevelt Dam, still barely tamed

The Banning Museum

The man who made a harbor out of an open bay: freight, dredging, the first railroad in Southern California, and a cupola for watching ships.

The Cascades

The concrete chute where the Los Angeles Aqueduct arrives, and where forty thousand people watched the Owens Valley come south in 1913.

The Flume Trail & Marlette Lake

The other thing the Comstock took off Lake Tahoe—not its trees but its water, hauled over a mountain range through the highest-pressure pipeline on earth, on a flume grade that is now one of the country's great mountain-bike rides

The Hogback

A knife-edge ridge with 1000-foot drops on both sides

The Hopi Mesas

Hopituh Shi-nu-mu — twelve villages on three mesas, and Old Oraibi

The Mob Museum

Organized crime, told in the downtown courtroom that first exposed it

The Neon Museum

The Neon Boneyard — where the Strip''s discarded signs are rescued and lit again

The Port of Los Angeles

The busiest container port in the country, sitting on ground that was dredged into existence: marsh, then landfill, then Pier 400.

This Is The Place Heritage Park

A living history village at the mouth of Emigration Canyon

Thistle Landslide

The ruins of a town destroyed by a massive landslide in 1983

Timpanogos Cave National Monument

Three spectacularly decorated caves connected by hand-carved tunnels

Tombstone

The silver strike named for a death that never came

Tonopah

The Queen of the Silver Camps — the 1900 strike that saved Nevada, and the one boom town that never became a ghost: a mine you can walk into, a grand hotel, a clown motel, and the darkest skies in America.

Tony Grove Lake

A glacial alpine lake at 8,100 feet surrounded by wildflower meadows

Topaz War Relocation Center

The Sevier Desert camp where the United States imprisoned 11,000 Japanese Americans

Torrey

A charming gateway town for Capitol Reef National Park

Trial Lake

A popular high-alpine fishing lake surrounded by granite peaks

Trona Pinnacles

More than five hundred tufa spires standing on a dry Pleistocene lakebed outside Ridgecrest.

Tropic

A quiet pioneer town in the shadow of Bryce Canyon

Tucson

The Old Pueblo — four thousand years of farming under the sky islands

Tumacácori National Historical Park

Arizona's first mission, on O'odham ground along the Santa Cruz River.

Tuzigoot

A hilltop Sinagua pueblo over the Verde, dug out of the ground in the Depression

Ubehebe Crater

A half-mile-wide steam-blast crater at the north end of the valley, and one of the youngest volcanoes in the park.

Upper Calf Creek Falls

A remote 88-foot cascade reached by a rugged trail

UT-128 Colorado River Road

A winding road through red rock canyons along the Colorado River

Utah Field House of Natural History

A dinosaur museum with life-size replicas in an outdoor garden

Utah Olympic Park

The ski jumping and bobsled venue from the 2002 Winter Olympics

Valley of Fire State Park

Jurassic sand dunes turned to blazing red stone — Nevada's oldest and largest state park

Valley of the Gods

A free, uncrowded alternative to Monument Valley

Vasquez Rocks

Sandstone beds stood on end by the fault underneath, on Tataviam ground, named for a man the county hanged.

Vernal

The self-proclaimed Dinosaur Capital of Utah

Virgin River Gorge

Virginia City

The boomtown that sits on top of the richest silver strike in America—fewer than a thousand people now, on streets built for twenty-five thousand

Walnut Canyon National Monument

Sinagua cliff dwellings in the limestone — the Hisatsinom

Ward Charcoal Ovens

Six great stone beehives in the Egan Range — the best-preserved charcoal kilns in Nevada, and the intact relic of the fuel that fed every silver smelter

Wedge Overlook

Utah's "Little Grand Canyon" — a 1,200-foot drop into the San Rafael Swell.

Wellsville Mountains

The steepest mountains in North America for their height

Wigwam Motel

Nineteen concrete teepees on Foothill Boulevard, the last of Frank Redford's Wigwam Villages and still renting rooms.

Williams

The last town on Route 66 to lose its traffic to the interstate — a rail gateway to the Grand Canyon since 1901, bypassed only in 1984 after a court fight, and revived twice over.

Wilson Arch

A stunning natural arch visible right from the highway

Wind Cave Trail

A short hike to a triple-arched limestone cave overlooking the canyon

Window Rock

Tségháhoodzání — the sacred arch, and the capital of the Diné

Winnemucca

The crossing town at the western end of the Humboldt — Basque tables, a 1900 bank robbery the town still pins on Butch Cassidy, and the spot where I-80 meets US-95.

Winslow

The town an Eagles lyric made famous — and the home of La Posada, the last great railroad hotel and Mary Colter's finest work, at the southern doorway to Hopi and Navajo country.

Wupatki National Monument

The red pueblo the volcano built — remembered, not abandoned

Zabriskie Point

Gullied gold badlands eroded out of an ancient lakebed, best at first light.

Zion National Park

Towering sandstone cliffs that glow like fire at sunset

Zion–Mount Carmel Tunnel

A mile-long tunnel blasted through Zion's sandstone in 1930, with windows cut in the cliff for light