Utah · Region

Greater Zion

Utah's red-rock southwest corner — Zion National Park and the canyons, ghost towns, and desert parks of Washington County around it.

10 places to explore

Greater Zion is the corner of Utah that most people picture when they picture Utah at all: a high desert of vermilion cliffs and slot canyons in the state's southwest, anchored by Zion National Park and spreading out across Washington County around it. It is the busiest, most-visited country in the state — Zion alone draws close to five million people a year — but the park is only the center of it. The region runs from the red sandstone above St. George, north into the alpine fingers of Kolob, and east up Highway 9 over the cliffs toward the open desert.

The heart of it is Zion National Park, a 2,000-foot-deep canyon cut by the Virgin River, walled in Navajo sandstone and best known for the shuttle-only Zion Canyon and the cliff-edge hikes above it. But the park has two faces most visitors miss: Kolob Canyons, its quieter northwest section off I-15, and the dramatic east side, where Highway 9 climbs through the 1930 Zion–Mount Carmel Tunnel past Checkerboard Mesa and the short, spectacular Canyon Overlook Trail.

Around the park sit the towns and detours that make a trip here more than a single stop. Springdale presses right up against the south entrance, a one-mile strip of lodging and galleries that doubles as the staging ground for the park shuttle. Just west, the abandoned Grafton ghost town sits in a river bend that has stood in for the Old West in more than one film, and Highway 9 runs east to the crossroads at Mount Carmel Junction. Out toward St. George, the region opens into the lava-and-sand landscapes of Snow Canyon State Park and the 200-million-year-old dinosaur tracks pressed into stone at the edge of town.

It is, in short, a region you can spend a weekend in or a week — the kind of place where the headline attraction is so big it hides everything around it. This guide is built to surface the rest.