Zion Mt. Carmel Tunnel and Highway

Blasting a mile-long tunnel through solid sandstone in the 1920s meant working from the inside out. Engineers drove galleries out to the cliff face, then used those openings to haul rock and, later, as windows onto the canyon. Finished in 1930, the tunnel and its switchbacking twenty-five-mile road opened Zion's east side and set the pattern for park roads built to fit their landscape rather than fight it. For a time it was the longest vehicular tunnel in the national parks. Cars still pass through it today on the Zion-Mount Carmel Highway.

What the plaque says

This 5,613- foot-long tunnel, the longest vehicular tunnel in the National Park System, was blasted through the towering sandstone cliffs above Pine Creek Canyon. Construction required extraordinary access through cliff-face galleries for blasting and excavation. The tunnel and the 25-mile-long highway, completed between 1927 and 1930, promoted the "NPS-Rustic" style of engineering and landscape architecture used throughout the National Park System. Constructed: 1927 – 1930 Designated: 2011

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Zion–Mount Carmel Tunnel — 1.6 mi
  A mile-long tunnel blasted through Zion's sandstone in 1930, with windows cut in the cliff for light
• Canyon Overlook Trail — 1.8 mi
  A short, exposed hike just east of the tunnel to a thousand-foot view down into Zion Canyon
• Springdale — 2.4 mi
  Zion's south-entrance gateway town, wedged between the Watchman and the Virgin River
• Checkerboard Mesa — 5.1 mi
  A 900-foot dome of Navajo sandstone scored into a natural grid, near Zion's east entrance

More markers nearby

• Birth of a Park — 1.5 mi
• Historic Irrigation Ditch — 2.1 mi
• Discovery of Zion Canyon — 2.4 mi
• Rockville Bridge — 5.5 mi