Musket Shot Springs Byway

Some names come straight off the page of a journal. In September 1776, crossing this basin on a trail already worn deep by Native travelers, the Domínguez-Escalante expedition passed two good springs, and Escalante measured the gap between them the way that world measured things — 'a musket shot apart,' about three hundred yards. The phrase stuck. Two and a half centuries later the springs still carry it, and a back-road byway traces the friars' route toward the Green River. The trail they followed was old before they came; they only wrote it down.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Dinosaur National Monument — 3.2 mi
  A wall of 1,500 dinosaur bones still embedded in the rock where they were found
• Fantasy Canyon — 7.1 mi
  Impossibly shaped rock formations that look like alien sculptures
• Vernal — 15 mi
  The self-proclaimed Dinosaur Capital of Utah
• Utah Field House of Natural History — 15 mi
  A dinosaur museum with life-size replicas in an outdoor garden

More markers nearby

• Escalante Crossed Here — 4.4 mi
• Korean Conflict Veterans Memorial — 15 mi
• Afghanistan & Iraq Veterans Memorial — 15 mi
• American Mother Veterans War Memorial — 15 mi