Cedar Breaks National Monument

The Southern Paiute people have lived in this region for centuries, and the high plateau country and the desert below were part of their seasonal world, gathered from and traveled through with the turning of the year. Their descendants remain in the area today, and the monument works with Paiute communities to honor that continuing connection to the land.

Mormon pioneers reached the Cedar City area in the 1850s, drawn by iron ore and the timber and water of the mountains above. They gave the breaks their name and grazed and logged the plateau. Cedar Breaks was set aside as a national monument in 1933 to protect the amphitheater and the high country around it, and it has been drawing travelers up the mountain roads ever since.

The colorful rock of Cedar Breaks is the Claron Formation, the same layered limestone, siltstone, and mudstone that forms the hoodoos of Bryce Canyon. It was deposited in ancient lakes and streams tens of millions of years ago, and its reds and oranges come from iron minerals that rusted within the rock, while the whites and yellows mark layers with different minerals.

The whole plateau was then lifted thousands of feet, and the soft, easily eroded rock at its western edge began to wear away fast. Water freezing and thawing in cracks pries the rock apart, and rain and snowmelt wash the debris downhill, sculpting the fins and spires. The amphitheater is still eroding and slowly growing, retreating a little further into the plateau with each passing century.

Along the rim grow bristlecone pines, gnarled and wind-twisted trees that are among the oldest living things on the planet, some of them thousands of years old. They survive on the harshest, most exposed edges where little else can, their dense wood resisting rot and insects, and standing among them is a quiet brush with deep time.

In summer the high meadows explode with wildflowers, sheets of blue, yellow, red, and white spreading across the plateau in one of Utah's finest alpine flower displays. Forests of spruce, fir, and aspen fill the gentler slopes, turning gold in autumn, and the whole rim country feels like a different, greener world from the red desert far below.

The plateau is home to mule deer, marmots, pikas among the rocks, and a rich array of birds, from Clark's nutcrackers in the pines to hawks and eagles over the amphitheater. Cedar Breaks is a certified International Dark Sky Park, and its high, dry, remote air makes for extraordinary stargazing, with the Milky Way blazing overhead on clear nights.

Because of its altitude, Cedar Breaks has a short season. Summer is brief and beautiful, with wildflowers and mild days broken by afternoon storms. Autumn brings golden aspen and crisp air. Then deep snow closes the rim road and buries the meadows, and for much of the year the monument belongs to skiers and snowshoers who reach it under their own power.

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