Logan Canyon Scenic Byway
US-89 climbs forty-one miles from Logan up its limestone canyon to a pass near 7,800 feet, then drops to the turquoise water of Bear Lake — a National Scenic Byway, glorious in fall and open year-round.
The Logan Canyon Scenic Byway is the prettiest forty-one miles in northern Utah, and one of the few drives in this guide you can take in any season. It runs east from Logan — the college town where US-89 and US-91 meet — up Logan Canyon along the Logan River, over a pass near 7,800 feet, and down the far side to the improbable turquoise of Bear Lake on the Utah–Idaho line. It is a National Scenic Byway, and in autumn, when the lower-canyon maples turn crimson and the high aspens go gold, it is hard to argue with the title.
The canyon goes to work on you immediately. US-89 enters at the northeast edge of town and threads between near-vertical limestone walls that hold something like 500 million years of geology, the rock laced with the marine fossils of an ancient seafloor. The Logan River runs alongside nearly the whole way, a popular trout stream that gives you a reason to pull over every few miles. A short way up, the Wind Cave Trail climbs to a triple-arched cave eroded straight out of the cliff face; a little farther, a hard trail from Wood Camp leads to the Jardine Juniper, a Rocky Mountain juniper that has been alive for more than 1,500 years.
The best stops ask you to leave the highway. About twenty miles in, a paved spur winds seven miles up to Tony Grove Lake, a glacial pool at 8,100 feet ringed with wildflowers by July, and a few miles past that a short road climbs to Beaver Mountain, a ski hill the same family has run since 1939. From there the byway tops out at Bear Lake Summit, where the trees fall away and the lake appears far below — a long sheet of impossible blue that locals call the Caribbean of the Rockies, its color coming from fine limestone suspended in the water.
The road switchbacks down to Garden City on the western shore, where the canyon keeps its last tradition: a raspberry milkshake made from berries grown in the valley's short, bright summer. Unlike the high byways farther south, this one stays open all year — the river steaming in the cold, Beaver Mountain running its lifts, the frozen lake at the bottom of the grade. But come in late September, drive it slowly, and you will understand why people in Cache Valley talk about this canyon the way other people talk about a cathedral.
The Drive, Stop by Stop
8 stops along the route, in driving order from Logan to Garden City.
- 1
- 2
- 3
- 4
- 5
- 6
- 7
- 8
That's the drive. Take your time, pull over often, and let Logan Canyon Scenic Byway do what it does best.
← Explore more of Open Road Guide