Central Utah

This is the broad middle of the state, the country most travelers only blow through at seventy miles an hour on their way to somewhere else — the long I-15 and US-89 corridors stitching the Wasatch Front to the southern red rock. But the heartland rewards a slower look, in pioneer towns, high cool mountains, and a handful of genuine curiosities.

Along the interstate, the old farm towns line up beneath the peaks: Nephi, at the foot of Mount Nebo, the highest summit in the entire Wasatch Range; Scipio on its little lake; and Beaver, a tidy ranching town famous for its cheese and, improbably, as the birthplace of both the outlaw Butch Cassidy and Philo Farnsworth, the father of television. Where I-15 meets I-70 stands Cove Fort, a squat fortress of black volcanic rock built in 1867 and preserved whole, down to the heavy wooden doors.

The back roads are better still. Up Marysvale Canyon glows the yellow-and-orange hill of Big Rock Candy Mountain, named for the old hobo ballad about a paradise of lemonade springs. Nearby, Fremont Indian State Park was born when highway crews cutting I-70 unearthed the largest Fremont village ever found, and its museum and canyon walls now hold the rock art they left behind. East of there, Fishlake National Forest cradles Utah's largest mountain lake and Pando — a single quaking aspen of some 47,000 trunks sharing one vast root system, among the largest living things on earth. And over in the green Sanpete Valley, the cream-colored Manti Temple, finished by pioneer hands in 1888, presides from its hill beneath the forested plateau of the Manti-La Sal National Forest.

Come for the drive; stay for the pioneer forts, the singing mountain, and the oldest forest you will ever walk through.

What to See in Central Utah

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

Central Utah rewards the unhurried. Pick a base, fan out, and let the country between the headline stops surprise you.