Cedar Breaks & Brian Head

High on the Markagunt Plateau above Cedar City, the land tilts up past 10,000 feet into a cool, thin-aired world of alpine meadows, bristlecone pines, and one of the most underrated wonders in the state. Where the southern parks bake, this country stays green and snow-fed well into summer — the high counterpoint to the red-rock desert below.

The centerpiece is Cedar Breaks National Monument, a vast natural amphitheater eroded into the same rust-and-cream limestone that built Bryce Canyon, but carved a half-mile higher off the edge of the plateau. Its rim sits above 10,000 feet, fringed with wildflowers in July and ancient bristlecones twisted by the wind, and its dark, dry skies have earned it some of the best stargazing in the West.

Just up the road, Brian Head is the highest town in Utah — a ski-and-mountain-bike village near 10,000 feet, beneath an 11,000-foot peak, reached by the Scenic Byway 143, the "Patchwork Parkway." And down on the valley floor near Parowan, the wind-carved notch of Parowan Gap holds hundreds of petroglyphs left by the Fremont and earlier peoples, including markings that appear to track the sun through the turning year.

Come in summer for the wildflowers and the cool, and in winter for the deep, quiet snow.

What to See in Cedar Breaks & Brian Head

3 places across the region, grouped by what they are.

Cedar Breaks & Brian Head rewards the unhurried. Pick a base, fan out, and let the country between the headline stops surprise you.