Highway 20
Twenty unsigned miles between I-15 and US-89 over Bear Valley — the Old Spanish Trail crossing that carried Panguitch's founders and the Quilt Walk of 1864.
The Route at a Glance
Highway 20 is twenty miles of road that almost nobody drives on purpose, and it carries more history per mile than either of the celebrated routes it connects. It leaves Interstate 15 at Exit 95, climbs east through Bear Valley to a 7,910-foot pass between the Markagunt Plateau and the Tushar Mountains, and drops to US-89 at Bear Valley Junction — the unsigned back door between the interstate and Panguitch, Bryce Canyon, and the upper Sevier. There is no scenic-byway designation at either end. The road never needed one. For two centuries this gap has simply been the way through.
It is old infrastructure. The Old Spanish Trail — the mule-caravan route that moved woven goods west and horses east between Santa Fe and Los Angeles in the 1830s and 1840s — crossed this exact saddle, climbing Bear Creek through Lower and Upper Bear Valley and then descending Little Creek Canyon to the Parowan Valley near Paragonah, an alignment the National Park Service still cites on the trail's official touring route. The fifty-four pioneer families who founded Panguitch came through the gap from Parowan by wagon, and in the famine winter that followed, seven of their men recrossed it on foot, laying quilts over snow too deep to wade and walking to Parowan and back for flour. That crossing is the Quilt Walk — the story behind the Patchwork Parkway name on neighboring Scenic Byway 143. The byway got the name; Bear Valley is where the walking happened.
Utah made the corridor a state highway in 1917, gave it the number 20 in 1927, and in 1953 shifted its western end north to the present interstate junction, retiring the original Little Creek alignment to a gravel backroad. The modern highway is the crossing the state actually wants you on: UDOT routes trucks over Highway 20 in preference to the steeper, twistier climbs of highways 14 and 9 farther south, and the road is built for the job — climbing lanes on the ascent, an eight-percent, three-mile descent into Little Bear Valley on the far side, plowed and open year-round.
The drive takes half an hour, and its pleasures are quiet ones: ranchland and sage, the long pull up through pinyon to the summit, aspen and meadow in the two Bear Valleys, and almost no one else on the road. At Bear Valley Junction the choice is simple — eleven miles south on US-89 to Panguitch, or ten minutes north to the Butch Cassidy Boyhood Home at Circleville. Either way, you have crossed the mountains the way the mules, the wagons, and the quilt walkers did, on the one road through this country that history picked first and the signs never caught up with.
The Drive, Stop by Stop
3 stops along the route, in driving order from I-15 Exit 95 to Bear Valley Junction (US-89). 3 of them sit off the road itself — the distance is noted on each.
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Markers Along This Road
Roadside plaques and monuments worth a pull-over — small history, standing exactly where it happened.
John Christopher Armstrong
Armstrong carved his name in the cliffs of Fremont Canyon during the 1849 expedition's December crossing; the carving is still there. Lead: the monument (off I-15 exit 100, beside the Old Spanish Trail and Winter Trail in Fremont Canyon markers) is an engraved granite slab: front with portrait, a facsimile of the 1849 canyon carving (John C Armstrong / 1849), heading, biography and three journal extracts; reverse with Pratt's commission and the company by tens; two black base plaques of descendants. Jacob Barlow's 2017-03-20 frames (jacobbarlow.com post 21972) read every word of the front, but the journal extracts' quotation marks and ellipsis dots, and the SUNDAY. 9TH punctuation, are marginal at 5312 px; the reverse and base plaques are not yet worked. No HMdb record (nearbylist at the pin returns the neighbouring expedition and trail markers only). Closes on a head-on frame of the front's lower half, then the reverse and base plaques from Barlow's frames 18-15-04 to 18-16-10. Lead (October 2, 2026): reverse read in full from Barlow frame 2017-03-20-18-15-04 (2984x5312); stored one line per cut row, paired names separated by " · " for the column gap (not cut): Parley P. Pratt received a commission from Brigham Young, the Governor of the State of Deseret to raise fifty men, with the necessary teams and outfit, on an exploring tour to the southward. First Ten Isaac C. Haight, Captain Parley P. Pratt, President William Wadsworth · Hial K. Gay Rufus Allen · George B. Mabson Chauncey West · Samuel Gould Dan Jones · Wm. P. Vance Second Ten Joseph Matthews, Captain John Brown · Schuyler Jennings Nathan Tanner · John H. Bankhead Sterling G. Driggs · John D. Holiday Homer Duncan · Robert M. Smith Wm. Matthews Third Ten Joseph Horn, Captain David Fulmer, Counselor Wm. Brown · James Farrer George Nebiker · Henry Heath Benjamin F. Stewart · Seth B. Tanner Alexander Wright · Alexander Lemon Fourth Ten Ephraim Green, Captain Wm. W. Phelps, Counselor Robert Campbell, Clerk Charles Hopkins · Peter Dustin Sidney Willis · Thomas Ricks Andrew Blodgett · Isaac H. Brown Wm. Henry Fifth Ten Josiah Arnold, Captain Jonathan Packer · Isaac B. Hatch Christopher Williams · John C. Armstrong Stephen Taylor · Dimick B. Huntington Manti Group Madison D. Hambleton · Edward Everett Gardner G. Potter · Sylvester Hewlitt John Lowry Jr. Monument sponsored by The John Christopher Armstrong Family Association Site courtesy of B.L.M. The final N of ASSOCIATION runs off the frame's right edge; the word is not in doubt. The two black base plaques are headed Contributions from the descendants of John C. and Mary Kirkbride Armstrong and are contributor boards, out. The front (frame 18-14-20, 2984x5312) remains: it reads in two crops, and the next pass transcribes it line by line, with its own SEE REVERSE SIDE now answered. Closed (October 2, 2026): front from Barlow frame 2017-03-20-18-14-20 read in overlapping strips, then the reverse as recorded above. Cast as is: BLEW THF TRUMPET, KANYON, SUNDAY. 9TH. Opening quotation marks resolve before all three journal entries and a closing mark after FROZE.; closing marks after BED. and JACOB. do not resolve and are dropped, as is the comma grammar expects after AS DEPICTED ON THIS MONUMENT. The doubled spaces after full stops are rendered single, and the spaced ellipsis dots as "...". Out: the portrait, the facsimile of the 1849 canyon carving (John C Armstrong / 1849) and the two descendants' contributor plaques. Description's last sentence corrected: it said no photograph showed the reverse.
Panguitch Fort
Beside the Quilt Walk marker; the families who crossed Bear Valley by wagon built their fort on what is now the school square.
Southern Utah Expedition of 1849 — Winter Trail in Fremont Canyon
One of four monuments to Parley P. Pratt's fifty-five-man winter expedition of 1849, whose report seeded Parowan, Cedar City, and most of Iron County.
The Old Spanish Trail
One of three markers sharing a pullout off I-15 exit 100 — the mule-caravan road to Los Angeles passed this way a generation before any wagon did. Inscription from Jacob Barlow's 2017-03-20 frames 18-15-14 (front) and 18-15-25 (reverse), jacobbarlow.com post 21971: a two-sided BLM board with routed lettering, carved under the 14 September ruling. The board routes almost no sentence stops (only after 1849); none shows after TRAIL, NAMES, CALIFORNIA, UTAH or ROUTE at 5312 px, and none is supplied. Cast errors kept: LEAD for led, FREMOT for Fremont. Scratched graffiti on the front (WDA) left out. The small wayside panel behind the board is a separate object and not read.
The Panguitch Quilt Walk
Garfield County's 1997 marker at Center and 200 East carries the full account — and all seven names — of the men who walked to Parowan on their bedding in the winter of 1864.
Stories Along This Route
Go deeper into the history and character of this drive.
That's the drive. Take your time, pull over often, and let Highway 20 do what it does best.
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