Paid Entry
These stops charge admission — a park fee, a ticket, a toll for the maintained road — and mostly they earn it. The money keeps a trail from washing out, a ranger at the desk, a fragile place from being loved to death. If you're linking several national parks, the annual America the Beautiful pass usually pays for itself fast. Budget for the gate, know what it covers, and treat the fee as rent on something rare.
US-61
UT-91
UT-101
Scenic Byway 123
Scenic Byway 12 / UT-631
I-154
Kolob Canyons
The quiet, uncrowded back door to Zion National Park
Lagoon Amusement Park
A beloved family amusement park operating since 1886
Ogden Union Station
A grand 1924 train depot turned museum complex
Thanksgiving Point
A massive complex with dinosaur bones, gardens, and a curiosity museum
I-15 (Ghost Town Road exit)1
I-171
UT-181
I-191
UT-242
NV-281
NV-28 / US-50 (Spooner Summit)1
I-402
US-403
Dinosaur National Monument
A wall of 1,500 dinosaur bones still embedded in the rock where they were found
Jordanelle State Park
A sapphire reservoir nestled between the Wasatch and Uinta mountains
Utah Field House of Natural History
A dinosaur museum with life-size replicas in an outdoor garden
CA-491
CA-49 / CA-201
Tyler Foote Crossing Road (off CA-49)1
US-502
Glenbrook & Spooner Summit
Lake Tahoe's east shore, where the basin was logged nearly clean to timber the Comstock—the forest that paid for the silver, and the century it has spent growing back
Sand Mountain
Nevada's largest dune — a 600-foot mountain of singing sand, a buried Pony Express station, and a butterfly found nowhere else
CA-62 / Park Boulevard1
SR-641
Historic Route 661
Off Historic Route 66 (Foothill/Colorado alignment)1
I-701
I-80 / Donner Pass Road1
UT-831
CA-891
SR-89A1
US-894
American West Heritage Center
A living history farm spanning 160 acres of Cache Valley
Coral Pink Sand Dunes State Park
Sweeping dunes of coral-colored sand framed by red cliffs
Sunset Crater Volcano
The volcano northern Arizona watched erupt, around 1085
Wupatki National Monument
The red pueblo the volcano built — remembered, not abandoned
UT-921
US-934
Cathedral Gorge State Park
A drained ancient lakebed eroded into buff-colored spires and narrow slot "caves" — one of Nevada's first state parks, and the gentle, otherworldly counterweight to the Silver Trails' ghost towns.
Hoover Dam
The 726-foot Depression-era colossus that tamed the Colorado and made Las Vegas possible
Lake Mead National Recreation Area
The largest reservoir in the country — and its most legible drought gauge
Ward Charcoal Ovens
Six great stone beehives in the Egan Range — the best-preserved charcoal kilns in Nevada, and the intact relic of the fuel that fed every silver smelter
US-953
Old Las Vegas Mormon Fort State Historic Park
The 1855 adobe fort where Las Vegas began — a mile and a world away from the neon
The Mob Museum
Organized crime, told in the downtown courtroom that first exposed it
The Neon Museum
The Neon Boneyard — where the Strip''s discarded signs are rescued and lit again
US-981
Loop 1011
UT-1012
UT-1111
CA-127 at CA-1901
UT-1481
UT-1501
NV-1592
US-1631
White Mountain Road (off CA-168)1
NV-1692
Badwater Road (CA-178)1
US-1891
CA-1903
Furnace Creek
The valley hub, the hottest air temperature ever officially recorded, and the Timbisha village that was here first.
Mesquite Flat Sand Dunes
Fourteen square miles of dunes near Stovepipe Wells, and the easiest sand in the park to reach.
Zabriskie Point
Gullied gold badlands eroded out of an ancient lakebed, best at first light.
Dantes View Road (off CA-190)1
US-1915
Arches National Park
Over 2,000 natural stone arches in one extraordinary landscape
Edge of the Cedars State Park Museum
An Ancestral Puebloan ruin you can climb down into
Flaming Gorge National Recreation Area
A turquoise reservoir carved into blazing red canyon walls
Hole N the Rock
A 5,000-square-foot home carved inside a massive sandstone boulder
Steinaker State Park
A warm-water reservoir popular for swimming in the desert heat