Bryce Canyon National Park — national park
Image by neufal54 from Pixabay

Bryce Canyon National Park

  • 2 min read
  • 37.640° N 112.170° W
  • Dark Sky Place

Interesting facts

  • The Paiute called the hoodoos Anka-ku-was-a-wits, meaning red painted faces, and the plateau's name, Paunsaugunt, is Paiute for home of the beaver.
  • The rocks owe their palette to trace minerals: hematite gives the oranges and reds, limonite the yellows, and manganese-rich pyrolusite the purples.
  • The hoodoos are carved from the soft Claron Formation of the Pink Cliffs, while harder rock nearby survives as solid monoliths in the White Cliffs.
  • Ebenezer Bryce's homestead did not last: drought, overgrazing and flooding drove him to move his family to Arizona in 1880, just six years after arriving.
  • Bryce Canyon Lodge was built in 1924 and 1925 from local timber and stone and is now a National Historic Landmark of 1920s park architecture.
  • An asteroid, 49272 Bryce Canyon, was named after the park in honour of its annual astronomy festival.
  • From Yovimpa and Rainbow points on clear days, the Black Mesas of eastern Arizona and western New Mexico are visible some 260 kilometres away.
  • A US Navy supply and repair ship named USS Bryce Canyon served in the Pacific Fleet from 1950 to 1981.
  • The park was run from Zion National Park until 1956, when Bryce Canyon finally received its own superintendent.
  • Black, lumpy crusts of cryptobiotic soil, living mixes of lichens, algae, fungi and cyanobacteria, slowly grow on the ground and help hold it against erosion.

Why it is worth it

Bryce Canyon is not really a canyon. It is a chain of vast natural amphitheatres eaten into the eastern edge of the Paunsaugunt Plateau in southern Utah, filled with thousands of hoodoos: slender spires and pinnacles of soft rock, some as tall as 60 m, coloured red, orange, pink and white. They were carved from old river and lake sediments by frost weathering and stream erosion, working back into the plateau edge rather than down from a central river. The largest amphitheatre, Bryce Amphitheater, is about 19 km long, 5 km wide and 240 m deep.

The park lies high, with its rim at about 2,400 to 2,700 m, and its rim looks out over the Paria valley to the Kaiparowits Plateau. An 18-mile (29 km) scenic drive runs south along the rim to Rainbow Point, the highest spot at 2,775 m, and on clear days the view from there and from Yovimpa Point reaches Navajo Mountain and the Kaibab Plateau in Arizona, about 145 km away. Short trails drop from the rim into the hoodoos: the Navajo Loop from Sunset Point and the Queens Garden trail from Sunrise Point wind among the columns, and the Bristlecone Loop circles Rainbow Point.

People have lived here for at least 10,000 years. The Paiute told that the hoodoos were the Legend People, turned to stone by the trickster Coyote for their misdeeds. The name comes from Ebenezer Bryce, a Scottish-born Mormon settler who homesteaded below the amphitheatre in 1874 and is reputed to have called it a hell of a place to lose a cow. Protected as a national monument in 1923 and a national park in 1928, Bryce is also a Dark Sky Park: its night sky is among the darkest in North America, with about 7,500 stars visible to the eye, and rangers lead stargazing programmes. The park is home to the largest protected population of the threatened Utah prairie dog.

Getting there

The nearest towns are Tropic and Panguitch. Cedar City is about 79 km away, and Cedar City Regional Airport (CDC) about 82 km. Zion National Park lies about 80 km to the southwest. A voluntary in-park shuttle runs in summer along the main road.

On these lists

The Most Beautiful Places in Utah 16The Most Beautiful Places in the United States 228The Most Beautiful National Parks in the United States 9The Most Beautiful Nature Sanctuaries in the United States 12The Most Beautiful Gardens, Parks and Forests in the United States 25The Most Beautiful National Parks 61The Most Beautiful Nature Sanctuaries 91The Most Beautiful Gardens, Parks and Forests 232

From the encyclopaedia

Bryce Canyon National Park is a national park of the United States located in southwestern Utah. The major feature of the park is Bryce Canyon, which, despite its name, is not a canyon but a collection of giant natural amphitheaters along the eastern side of the Paunsaugunt Plateau. Bryce is distinctive due to geological structures called hoodoos, formed by frost weathering and stream erosion of the river and lake bed sedimentary rock. The red, orange, and white colors of the rocks provide distinctive views for park visitors. Bryce Canyon National Park is much smaller and sits at a much higher elevation than nearby Zion National Park. The rim at Bryce varies from 8,000 to 9,000 feet.

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37.64000, -112.17000per Wikidata