Utah State Parks is the common name for the Utah Division of State Parks; [1] a division of the Utah Department of Natural Resources. This is the state agency that manages the state park system of the state of Utah in the United States.
Utah's state park system began with four heritage parks in 1957: Sugar House Park (which was later removed from the system), Utah Territorial Statehouse in Fillmore, This Is the Place Monument in Salt Lake City, and Camp Floyd outside of Fairfield. Today, there are 46 Utah State Parks and several undeveloped areas totaling over 95,000 acres (380 km2) of land and more than one million surface acres of water. Utah's state parks are scattered throughout Utah; from Bear Lake State Park at the Utah/Idaho border to Edge of the Cedars State Park Museum deep in the Four Corners region, and everywhere in between.
The Division of State Parks also administers the Utah off highway vehicle, boating, and trails programs. In this capacity, they work to provide access to waterways and trails, and promote education, safety, and resource protection. [2]
The division's mission statement is "To enhance the quality of life by preserving and providing natural, cultural, and recreational resources for the enjoyment, education, and inspiration of this and future generations."
Park name | Web- site | County or counties | Size [3] | Elevation [4] | Year established [4] | Visitors (2016) [5] | Remarks [4] | ||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Anasazi State Park Museum | Garfield | 6 acres (2.4 ha) | 6,700 ft (2042 m) | 1970 | 20,824 | Interprets a large Ancestral Puebloan village occupied from AD 1160 to 1235. | |||
Antelope Island State Park | Davis | 22,022 acres (11340 ha) | 5,308 ft (1618 m) | 1969 | 398,147 | Protects Antelope Island, the largest island in the Great Salt Lake and habitat for bison, Pronghorn, and bighorn sheep. | |||
Bear Lake State Park | Rich | 5,900 ft (1798 m) | 1962 | 249,781 | Comprises three units on Bear Lake. | ||||
Camp Floyd / Stagecoach Inn State Park and Museum | Utah | 40 acres (16 ha) | 4,877 ft (1487 m) | 1958 | 13,623 | Interprets sites from the time of a massive 1858-1861 U.S. Army camp prompted by fear of the Utah War. | |||
Coral Pink Sand Dunes State Park | Kane | 3,730 acres (1510 ha) | 6,000 ft (1829 m) | 1963 | 82,427 | Preserves the only dune field on the Colorado Plateau, with a unique color caused by iron oxides and minerals in the Navajo sandstone. | |||
Dead Horse Point State Park | Grand and San Juan | 5,300 acres (2145 ha) [6] | 5,900 ft (1798 m) | 1959 | 403,737 | Showcases views of the Colorado River and Canyonlands National Park from a finger of land once used as a horse corral. | |||
Deer Creek State Park | Wasatch | 3,260 acres (1319 ha) | 5,400 ft (1646 m) | 1971 | 283,744 | Adjoins the extremely popular 2,965-acre (1,200 ha) Deer Creek Reservoir. | |||
East Canyon State Park | Morgan | 267 acres (108 ha) | 5,700 ft (1737 m) | 1962 | 85,163 | Features a reservoir in a canyon first traversed by the Donner Party and soon thereafter by Mormon pioneers. | |||
Echo State Park | Summit | 2018 | ?? | Echo Reservoir recreation. | |||||
Edge of the Cedars State Park Museum | San Juan | 16 acres (6.5 ha) | 6,200 ft (1890 m) | 1978 | 9,626 | Interprets an Ancestral Puebloan village occupied from AD 825 to 1125. | |||
Escalante Petrified Forest State Park | Garfield | 1,350 acres (546 ha) | 5,900 ft (1798 m) | 1976 | 52,110 | Features petrified wood and other fossils plus a recreational reservoir. | |||
Flight Park State Recreation Area | Salt Lake and Utah | 147 acres (60 ha) [7] | 5,146 ft (1569 m) | 2006 | No Data | Offers one of the world's best training sites for hang gliding and parasailing, plus a modelport for radio control aircraft. | |||
Fred Hayes State Park at Starvation | Duchesne | 3,500 acres (1416 ha) | 5,700 ft (1737 m) | 1972 | 100,489 | Features a 3,495-acre (1,414 ha) reservoir where early settlers once struggled against starvation. | |||
Fremont Indian State Park and Museum | Sevier | 889 acres (360 ha) | 5,900 ft (1798 m) | 1987 | 17,550 | Preserves rock art and artifacts from the largest Fremont culture village yet discovered. | |||
Frontier Homestead State Park Museum | Iron | 11 acres (4 ha) | 5,800 ft (1768 m) | 1973 | 9,265 | Preserves historic structures and equipment from the 1850s to the 1920s, including Old Iron Town and an extensive collection of horse-drawn vehicles. Formerly called Iron Mission State Park. | |||
Goblin Valley State Park | Emery | 3,654 acres (1479 ha) | 5,000 ft (1524 m) | 1974 | 191,414 | Showcases an unearthly landscape of hoodoos and other rock formations. | |||
Goosenecks State Park | San Juan | 10 acres (4 ha) | 4,500 ft (1372 m) | 1962 | 51,985 | Overlooks some dramatic meanders of the San Juan River. | |||
Great Salt Lake State Park | Salt Lake | 162 acres (66 ha) [8] | 4,200 ft (1280 m) | 1978 | 396,911 | Maintains a public boat launch and 320-slip marina on the Great Salt Lake. | |||
Green River State Park | Emery | 53 acres (21 ha) | 4,050 ft (1234 m) | 1965 | 56,828 | Features a shady campground, nine-hole golf course, and float trip launching on the Green River. | |||
Gunlock State Park | Washington | 549 acres (222 ha) | 3,600 ft (1097 m) | 1970 | 14,423 | Adjoins a 266-acre (108 ha) reservoir. | |||
Historic Union Pacific Rail Trail State Park | Summit | 450 acres (182 ha) | 6,900 ft (2103 m) | 1992 | No Data | Comprises a 28-mile (45 km) rail trail on a route used by the Union Pacific Railroad from 1880 to 1989. | |||
Huntington State Park | Emery | 111 acres (45 ha) | 5,840 ft (1780 m) | 1966 | 30,708 | Features a warm-water reservoir. | |||
Hyrum State Park | Cache | 264 acres (107 ha) | 4,700 ft (1433 m) | 1959 | 75,073 | Surrounds a 450-acre (180 ha) reservoir. | |||
Jordan River Off-Highway Vehicle State Recreation Area | Salt Lake | 350 acres (142 ha) [9] | 4,700 ft (1433 m) | 2002 | 12,130 | Offers four tracks for off highway vehicles along the Jordan River. | |||
Jordanelle State Park | Wasatch | 6,166 ft (1879 m) | 1995 | 403,136 | Comprises two recreation areas on Jordanelle Reservoir. | ||||
Kodachrome Basin State Park | Kane | 2,240 acres (906 ha) | 5,800 ft (1768 m) | 1963 | 107,850 | Showcases 67 rock spires and other geologic wonders in a basin so photogenic it was named after Kodachrome film. | |||
Lost Creek State Park | Morgan | 2021 | No data | ||||||
Millsite State Park | Emery | 638 acres (258 ha) | 6,100 ft (1859 m) | 1971 | 28,805 | Features a reservoir and lands for off highway vehicles and mountain biking. | |||
Otter Creek State Park | Piute | 80 acres (32 ha) | 5,900 ft (1798 m) | 1964 | 31,361 | Features a 3,120-acre (1,260 ha) reservoir, begun in 1897 as one of the earliest dam projects in Utah. | |||
Palisade State Park | Sanpete | 64 acres (26 ha) | 5,800 ft (1768 m) | 1962 | 113,713 | Features a reservoir and 18-hole golf course on the former site of a private resort founded in the 1860s. | |||
Piute State Park | Piute | 40 acres (16 ha) | 5,900 ft (1798 m) | 1963 | 1,302 | Protects a quiet fishing reservoir on the Sevier River. | |||
Quail Creek State Park | Washington | 3,300 ft (1006 m) | 1986 | 83,017 | Adjoins a 600-acre (240 ha) reservoir surrounded by red rock desert. | ||||
Red Fleet State Park | Uintah | 1,963 acres (794 ha) [10] | 5,500 ft (1676 m) | 1988 | 28,506 | Features a 750-acre (300 ha) reservoir and a fossil trackway of dinosaur footprints. | |||
Rockport State Park | Summit | 550 acres (223 ha) | 6,000 ft (1829 m) | 1966 | 118,556 | Features a 1,080-acre (440 ha) reservoir. | |||
Sand Hollow State Park | Washington | 20,611 acres (8341 ha) [11] | 3,000 ft (914 m) | 2003 | 433,152 | Features a 1,322-acre (535 ha) reservoir and an extensive off highway vehicle recreation area. | |||
Scofield State Park | Carbon | 7,600 ft (2316 m) | 1965 | 21,860 | Features a 2,800-acre (1,100 ha) reservoir. | ||||
Snow Canyon State Park | Washington | 7,400 acres (2995 ha) [12] | 3,100 ft (945 m) | 1962 | 272,041 | Showcases a canyon carved out of colorful Navajo sandstone and landforms created by the Santa Clara Volcano. | |||
Steinaker State Park | Uintah | 2,283 acres (924 ha) | 5,500 ft (1676 m) | 1964 | 37,519 | Features an 820-acre (330 ha) reservoir. | |||
This Is the Place Heritage Park | Salt Lake | 450 acres (182 ha) | 4,921 ft (1500 m) [13] | 1957 | No Data | Interprets Utah's settlement era with a living history village and This Is the Place Monument. | |||
Utahraptor State Park | Grand | 2021 | Not data | Features the Dalton Wells Dinosaur Quarry | |||||
Territorial Statehouse State Park Museum | Millard | 3 acres (1.2 ha) | 5,100 ft (1554 m) | 1957 | 7,957 | Interprets the capitol of Utah Territory, the state's oldest government building, constructed between 1852 and 1855. | |||
Utah Field House of Natural History State Park Museum | Uintah | 2 acres (0.8 ha) | 5,300 ft (1615 m) | 1959 | 58,042 | Houses a state-owned museum of natural history. | |||
Utah Lake State Park | Utah | 308 acres (125 ha) | 4,500 ft (1372 m) | 1970 | 132,954 | Adjoins Utah Lake, the state's largest body of fresh water. | |||
Wasatch Mountain State Park | Wasatch | 21,592 acres (8738 ha) [14] | 5,900 ft (1798 m) | 1968 | 336,230 | Features extensive recreational developments, including facilities built for the 2002 Winter Olympics. | |||
Willard Bay State Park | Box Elder | 4,200 ft (1280 m) | 1966 | 297,837 | Provides water recreation opportunities on a 9,900-acre (4,000 ha) freshwater reservoir on the floodplain of the Great Salt Lake. | ||||
Yuba State Park | Juab and Sanpete | 15,940 acres (6451 ha) [15] | 5,100 ft (1554 m) | 1970 | 105,819 | Features a reservoir on the Sevier River. | |||
Utah is a landlocked state in the Mountain West subregion of the Western United States. It is bordered to its east by Colorado, to its northeast by Wyoming, to its north by Idaho, to its south by Arizona, and to its west by Nevada. Utah also touches a corner of New Mexico in the southeast. Of the fifty U.S. states, Utah is the 13th-largest by area; with a population over three million, it is the 30th-most-populous and 11th-least-densely populated. Urban development is mostly concentrated in two areas: the Wasatch Front in the north-central part of the state, which is home to roughly two-thirds of the population and includes the capital city, Salt Lake City; and Washington County in the southwest, with more than 180,000 residents. Most of the western half of Utah lies in the Great Basin.
In the United States, a national monument is a protected area that can be created from any land owned or controlled by the federal government by proclamation of the president of the United States or an act of Congress. National monuments protect a wide variety of natural and historic resources, including sites of geologic, marine, archaeological, and cultural importance. In contrast, national parks in the U.S. must be created by Congressional legislation. Some national monuments were first created by presidential action and later designated as national parks by congressional approval.
The Great Basin is the largest area of contiguous endorheic watersheds, those with no outlets, in North America. It spans nearly all of Nevada, much of Utah, and portions of California, Idaho, Oregon, Wyoming, and Baja California. It is noted for both its arid climate and the basin and range topography that varies from the North American low point at Badwater Basin in Death Valley to the highest point of the contiguous United States, less than 100 miles (160 km) away at the summit of Mount Whitney. The region spans several physiographic divisions, biomes, ecoregions, and deserts.
Canyonlands National Park is an American national park located in southeastern Utah near the town of Moab. The park preserves a colorful landscape eroded into numerous canyons, mesas, and buttes by the Colorado River, the Green River, and their respective tributaries. Legislation creating the park was signed into law by President Lyndon B. Johnson on September 12, 1964.
The Jordan River, in the state of Utah, United States, is a river about 51 miles (82 km) long. Regulated by pumps at its headwaters at Utah Lake, it flows northward through the Salt Lake Valley and empties into the Great Salt Lake. Four of Utah's six largest cities border the river: Salt Lake City, West Valley City, West Jordan, and Sandy. More than a million people live in the Jordan Subbasin, part of the Jordan River watershed that lies within Salt Lake and Utah counties. During the Pleistocene, the area was part of Lake Bonneville.
The City of Rocks National Reserve, also known as the Silent City of Rocks, is a United States National Reserve and state park in south-central Idaho, approximately 2 miles (3.2 km) north of the border with Utah. It is widely known for its enormous granite rock formations and excellent rock climbing.
Timpanogos Cave National Monument is a United States National Monument protecting the Timpanogos Cave Historic District and a cave system on Mount Timpanogos in American Fork Canyon in the Wasatch Range, near Highland, Utah, in the United States. The site is managed by the National Park Service. The 1.5-mile (2.4 km) long trail to the cave entrance gains 1,092 feet (333 m) height, but it is paved and fairly wide making it accessible for most people. The three caves of the system, one of which is specifically called Timpanogos Cave, are only viewable on guided tours when the monument is open, usually from May through September depending on snow conditions and funding. There is the standard tour going through the cave system, and an Introduction to Caving tour which teaches Leave No Trace caving and goes further into Hansen Cave.
Dead Horse Point State Park is a state park in San Juan County, Utah in the United States, featuring a dramatic overlook of the Colorado River and Canyonlands National Park. The park opened to the public in 1959 and covers 5,362 acres (2,170 ha) of high desert at an altitude of 5,900 feet (1,800 m).
The Wave is a sandstone rock formation located in Arizona, US, near its northern border with Utah. The formation is situated on the slopes of the Coyote Buttes in the Paria Canyon-Vermilion Cliffs Wilderness of the Colorado Plateau. The area is administered by the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) at the Grand Staircase–Escalante National Monument visitor center in Kanab, Utah.
Snow Canyon State Park is a state park in Utah, located in the Red Cliffs Desert Reserve. The park features a canyon carved from the red and white Navajo sandstone of the Red Mountains, as well as the extinct Santa Clara Volcano, lava tubes, lava flows, and sand dunes. Snow Canyon is located near the cities of Ivins and St. George in Washington County.
Canyons of the Ancients National Monument is a national monument protecting an archaeologically significant landscape located in the southwestern region of the U.S. state of Colorado. The monument's 176,056 acres (71,247 ha) are managed by the Bureau of Land Management, as directed in the presidential proclamation which created the site on June 9, 2000. Canyons of the Ancients National Monument is part of the National Landscape Conservation System, better known as the National Conservation Lands. This system comprises 32 million acres managed by the Bureau of Land Management to conserve, protect, and restore these nationally significant landscapes recognized for their outstanding cultural, ecological, and scientific values. Canyons of the Ancients encompasses and surrounds three of the four separate sections of Hovenweep National Monument, which is administered by the National Park Service. The monument was proclaimed in order to preserve the largest concentration of archaeological sites in the United States, primarily Ancestral Puebloan ruins. As of 2022, over 8,500 individual archeological sites had been documented within the monument.
Lake Tahoe–Nevada State Park is a state park comprising multiple management units and public recreation areas on the northeast shores of Lake Tahoe in the U.S. state of Nevada. The park covers approximately 14,301 acres (5,787 ha). The Marlette Lake Water System, which is listed on the National Register of Historic Places and as a National Historic Civil Engineering Landmark, lies within park boundaries.
Interstate 70 (I-70) is a mainline route of the Interstate Highway System in the United States connecting Utah and Maryland. The Utah section runs east–west for approximately 232 miles (373 km) across the central part of the state. Richfield is the largest Utah city served by the freeway, which does not serve or connect any urban areas in the state. The freeway was built as part of a system of highways connecting Los Angeles and the Northeastern United States. I-70 was the second attempt to connect southern California to the east coast of the United States via central Utah, the first being a failed attempt to construct a transcontinental railroad. Parts of that effort were reused in the laying out of the route of I-70.
The landlocked U.S. state of Utah is known for its natural diversity and is home to features ranging from arid deserts with sand dunes to thriving pine forests in mountain valleys. It is a rugged and geographically diverse state at the convergence of three distinct geological regions: the Rocky Mountains, the Great Basin, and the Colorado Plateau.
The economy of Utah is a diversified economy covering industries such as tourism, mining, agriculture, manufacturing, information technology, finance, and petroleum production. The majority of Utah's gross state product is produced along the Wasatch Front, containing the state capital Salt Lake City.
The Mountain states form one of the nine geographic divisions of the United States that are officially recognized by the United States Census Bureau. It is a subregion of the Western United States.
Mojave Trails National Monument is a large U.S. National Monument located in the state of California between Interstates 15 and 40. It partially surrounds the Mojave National Preserve. It was designated by President Barack Obama on February 12, 2016, along with Castle Mountains National Monument and Sand to Snow National Monument, also in southern California. It is under the administration of the Bureau of Land Management.
Sand to Snow National Monument is a U.S. National Monument located in San Bernardino County and northern Riverside County, Southern California.
This article incorporates public domain material fromthe websiteof the Utah Division of State Parks .