US-89 Heritage Highway
Forty-some miles down the floor of Sanpete Valley, US-89 threads the best-preserved string of pioneer Mormon towns in Utah — the "Little Denmark" heart of the Mormon Pioneer National Heritage Area, from Fairview's Ice Age mammoth past Manti's 1888 temple to Gunnison's century-old Casino Star Theatre.
The Route at a Glance
For roughly forty miles down the floor of Sanpete Valley, U.S. Highway 89 runs through the best-preserved run of pioneer Mormon towns in Utah. The northern half is the heart of the federally designated Mormon Pioneer National Heritage Area — the stretch known as Little Denmark, for the Danish and Scandinavian converts who settled it in the 1850s and built it out of local cream-colored oolite limestone. It is an easy two-lane drive past pastures and grain fields, hemmed by the Wasatch Plateau on the east, and it rewards an unhurried half-day far more than a quick pass-through.
The route begins at Fairview, the valley's north gate, where a free town museum keeps a near-complete Ice Age mammoth. Six miles south is Mount Pleasant, with its National Register Main Street and Wasatch Academy, the oldest boarding school in the state. A short detour east leads to Spring City — one of only two towns in the country whose entire footprint is a national historic district. Back on the highway, Ephraim is the Scandinavian hub and home of Snow College, and just beyond it stands Manti, the valley's first settlement, beneath the twin spires of its 1888 oolite temple.
South of Manti the valley opens out. Sterling is the turnoff for Palisade State Park, with its reservoir and desert-canyon golf course; a side road runs east to Mayfield at the mouth of Twelve Mile Canyon and the climb to Skyline Drive; and the route ends at Gunnison, the valley's working southern hub, where the 1912 Casino Star Theatre is the oldest operating movie house in the state.
Together the towns trace the arc of central Utah's settlement, spreading outward from the 1849 founding of Manti across what is now Central Utah. Drive it in autumn, when the plateau behind the towns turns gold, or in late spring, when Ephraim's Scandinavian Festival and Spring City's Heritage Day bring the old streets back to life.
The Drive, Stop by Stop
8 stops along the route, in driving order from Fairview to Gunnison.
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Markers Along This Road
Roadside plaques and monuments worth a pull-over — small history, standing exactly where it happened.
An Inspiring Heritage
Fairview's heritage-area wayside introduces Little Denmark — the twelve Sanpete towns settled from 1849, whose builders left the valley its co-ops, opera houses, social halls, and the Manti Temple.
Ephraim Co-op Building
The 1871 oolitic-limestone co-op is one of the last survivors of the 120-plus cooperative mercantiles the LDS church ran in the 1870s — and its second floor housed the Sanpete Stake Academy that grew into Snow College.
The Manti Temple
The road commission's marker stands on US-89 at the foot of temple hill, looking up at the 1888 Manti Temple that anchors the heritage highway's skyline up and down the Sanpete Valley.
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 US-89 Heritage Highway do what it does best.
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