Capitol Reef National Park

Long before the orchards, the Fremont people farmed and hunted along the river here for centuries, roughly a thousand years ago, leaving behind pit-house sites, storage granaries, and striking rock art. Broad-shouldered human figures with trapezoidal bodies and elaborate headdresses are pecked into the cliffs along Highway 24, some of the most memorable petroglyphs in the Southwest. The Fremont eventually moved on, and the Ute and Southern Paiute peoples have long-standing ties to this country as well.

In the 1880s, Mormon settlers established a small farming community they called Fruita along the Fremont River, planting the fruit trees whose descendants still bear today. Never more than about ten families lived here at once, working the narrow strip of good soil. The one-room Fruita schoolhouse and the Gifford farmhouse remain, and the Park Service keeps the orchards alive as a living link to that pioneer past, complete with homemade pies sold at the Gifford Homestead.

The heart of Capitol Reef is the Waterpocket Fold, a classic geologic feature called a monocline, essentially a step-up buckle in otherwise flat rock layers. It formed tens of millions of years ago when deep faults shifted and forced the overlying rock into a long, sloping fold that runs nearly a hundred miles across the desert.

Erosion has since stripped and sculpted that fold into the reef you see, exposing a colorful stack of ancient sandstones, shales, and limestones. The white domes of Navajo sandstone, the red cliffs, and the deep narrow canyons are all pieces of that tilted layer cake. The fold's name comes from the many waterpockets, natural basins in the sandstone that catch and hold rainwater, precious in this dry country and vital to its wildlife.

Highway 24 gives an easy taste of the park, running past the petroglyph panels, the old schoolhouse, and short walks to spots like the natural bridge and Hickman Bridge. From Fruita, the paved Scenic Drive leads deeper toward the mouths of Grand Wash and Capitol Gorge, dry canyons you can walk into between towering walls. Capitol Gorge even carries a Pioneer Register where early travelers scratched their names in the rock.

Beyond the paved roads, the park stretches far to the north into Cathedral Valley, with its freestanding sandstone monoliths, and south along the Waterpocket Fold, both reached by long unpaved routes best suited to high-clearance vehicles. These remote corners are where Capitol Reef feels most like the empty, sculpted wilderness it is.

The riverside cottonwoods of Fruita draw mule deer, wild turkeys, and marmots, while the desert uplands hold desert bighorn sheep, coyotes, ringtails, and a rich cast of lizards and songbirds. Capitol Reef is also a certified International Dark Sky Park, and with almost no light for miles the night sky over the domes is spectacularly clear.

Spring brings blossoms to the orchards and mild hiking weather, while summer is hot and marked by the afternoon thunderstorms of the monsoon, which can send flash floods through the canyons. Fall is many visitors' favorite, cooler and quiet with ripe fruit and turning cottonwoods. Winter is cold and still, the red rock and white domes often capped with snow.

The closest Boutel™ stays, so you can turn this stop into an overnight. Each is an independently owned, editorially selected place to stay.