Caineville

Some places make you earn every year. Caineville sits in blue-gray badlands along the Fremont River, land so bare it looks like the moon — and settlers came in the 1880s to farm it anyway. For a while they did: fruit, corn, melons, alfalfa wrung from thin soil and river water. But the Fremont would not hold still. Every two or three years a flood tore out their dams, and a big one in 1909 broke the town's back. Most gave up and left. A few hardy souls never did, and Caineville, against all sense, is still there.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Factory Butte — 7.0 mi
  A moonscape monolith rising from Mancos Shale badlands west of Hanksville.
• Hickman Bridge Trail — 11 mi
  A natural stone bridge framing Capitol Reefs layered cliffs
• Gifford Homestead — 12 mi
  A pioneer homestead famous for its fresh-baked pies
• Fruita Historic District — 12 mi
  A pioneer orchard oasis in the red-rock heart of Capitol Reef.

More markers nearby

• Images in Stone — 12 mi
• Fruita Schoolhouse — 12 mi