The Temples and Towers of the Virgin from the flat behind the Zion Human History Museum, in October — the flat-topped West Temple closing the left end of the wall, then a run of white Navajo sandstone summits and pale spires standing above sheer red-brown cliffs, with one peak toward the right carrying a long rust-coloured streak down its face. Cottonwoods on the canyon floor have gone yellow and gold across the bottom of the frame, dry grass and juniper cover the bench at right, and broken cloud runs over the rim. Zion Canyon proper, the Narrows and the shuttle road are all upstream and out of the picture.
John Fowler / CC BY 2.0 via Wikimedia Commons
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.

11 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.

What to See in Greater Zion

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

Geology & Rock Formations

Checkerboard Mesa seen from the pullout on Zion's east side — a pale rounded dome of sandstone scored into a grid by horizontal cross-bedding and vertical cracks, ponderosa pines standing below it and a second white slickrock ridge beyond, viewed over a curved red sandstone parapet wall in the foreground.

Checkerboard Mesa

Springdale

A 900-foot dome of Navajo sandstone scored into a natural grid, near Zion's east entrance

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A finger canyon in the Kolob section of Zion — a massive red sandstone butte filling the frame, its face streaked with dark desert varnish and hollowed by shallow alcoves, a dark timbered ridge along its top, and further red walls stepping away on both sides above green pinyon and juniper slopes, under blue sky with cumulus.

Kolob Canyons

Cedar City

The quiet, uncrowded back door to Zion National Park

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The Dinosaur Discovery Site museum at Johnson Farm — a low steel-framed hall with a tall glazed front and exposed roof struts, banners on the side wall reading ST. GEORGE DINOSAUR DISCOVERY SITE AT JOHNSON FARM and SCELIDOSAURUS, THE ONLY ONE IN THE AMERICAS, and an empty parking lot in the foreground under clear blue sky. The trackways themselves are inside the building and not visible.

St. George Dinosaur Discovery Site at Johnson Farm

St. George

Real dinosaur footprints preserved in ancient sandstone

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A park road in Zion at canyon level in low warm light — two lanes curving away with a double yellow line, red sandstone ledges along the right shoulder, and the canyon opening ahead between wooded slopes to sunlit orange cliffs and white-capped sandstone peaks under blue sky streaked with cirrus. Two cyclists ride on the shoulder in the middle distance.

Zion National Park

Springdale

Towering sandstone cliffs that glow like fire at sunset

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Natural Areas

Snow Canyon from the rim — red sandstone cliffs banded with white along the far side, black basalt rubble in the foreground and dark lava spread across the valley floor, the park road curving through pale desert grass between them, and blue ranges on the horizon.

Snow Canyon State Park

Ivins

Red and white sandstone cliffs with ancient lava flows

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Hikes & Trails

The view from the Canyon Overlook — a deep canyon dropping away between sheer red walls and fluted buttresses, the highway switchbacking up its floor in tight hairpins through pinyon and juniper, and white-capped sandstone peaks standing across the canyon mouth in the distance under a cloudless sky.

Canyon Overlook Trail

Springdale

A short, exposed hike just east of the tunnel to a thousand-foot view down into Zion Canyon

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Historic Sites

Grafton across a hayfield — the brick schoolhouse with its white bell cupola at left and a two-storey brick house with a covered porch at centre, both standing among cottonwoods behind a leaning barbed-wire fence on weathered posts. Red and grey benchland rises behind, with a white sandstone peak at the far right under deep blue sky.

Grafton Ghost Town

Rockville

A photogenic ghost town used in the film Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid

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The concrete-lined Hurricane Canal running full of water into an opening cut in the cliffside in 1971, with timber control-gate frames standing over the channel

Hurricane Canal Trail

Hurricane

The hand-dug canal that built Hurricane, now a walking trail blasted into the Virgin River gorge

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An archival black-and-white photograph of the Zion–Mount Carmel Tunnel under construction — the rough-blasted portal framed by heavy timber falsework and raking braces, stacked lagging timbers inside the dark opening, and three workmen in shirtsleeves, wide-brimmed hats and laced boots standing on the rubble apron in front of it. A hose runs out along the rock wall at right.

Zion–Mount Carmel Tunnel

Springdale

A mile-long tunnel blasted through Zion's sandstone in 1930, with windows cut in the cliff for light

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Towns & Gateways

The junction signpost at Mount Carmel — a stack of five direction signs reading BRYCE CANYON NATIONAL PARK with a left arrow, then GRAND CANYON NATIONAL PARK, LAKE POWELL and KANAB with right arrows and ORDERVILLE with a left, with a small bird perched on the top edge. The empty highway runs past in the foreground, a stop sign and low motel buildings stand at the far corner, and a wooded sandstone bluff rises behind.

Mount Carmel Junction

Mount Carmel Junction

The crossroads where the road to Zion meets the highway to Bryce

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Zion Park Boulevard through Springdale in winter — a bare cottonwood over the sidewalk, shopfronts hung with garlands and signs for a gift shop and deli and the Pioneer Lodge along the right, parked cars and an RV further down the street, and the red and white cliffs at Zion's south entrance rising directly behind the town under overcast sky.

Springdale

Springdale

Zion's south-entrance gateway town, wedged between the Watchman and the Virgin River

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Scenic Drives through Greater Zion

Scenic Byway

Highway 9 Scenic Byway

A 57-mile drive from the I-15 gateway through Springdale and Zion National Park to Mount Carmel Junction — climbing the cliff-face switchbacks and the 1930 Zion–Mount Carmel Tunnel along the way.

57 mi · 2 hrs
Scenic Byway

I-15: The Virgin River Gorge

Three states in twenty-nine Arizona miles — I-15 threads the Virgin River Gorge, the most expensive rural interstate ever built, following the desert water that drew every road here from the Old Spanish Trail to the Las Vegas Springs.

120 mi · 2 hrs
Scenic Byway

US-89: Climbing the Grand Staircase

The climb from Lake Powell to Bryce Canyon — up the Grand Staircase, where each step north is younger rock and higher ground, from the slickrock desert to the Pink Cliffs and their hoodoos.

163 mi · 3.5 hrs

Stories from Greater Zion

Culture

The Town They Dug Before They Built It

For eleven winters, farmers from the flood-wrecked villages of the upper Virgin River blasted a canal along a gorge wall to water a bench where nobody lived. The water arrived in 1904. The first family arrived two years later.

5 min read
Culture

The Small Print at the Side of the Road

Utah's historical markers carry two stories: the one on the front, and the one at the bottom — a hundred and twenty-five years of daughters, sons, counties, towns, and one museum deciding what deserved bronze.

6 min read

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

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