Jacob Lake

The forested highland here is the Kaibab Plateau, and the name comes from a Southern Paiute word often rendered as mountain lying down. The Southern Paiute, whose descendants belong to the Kaibab Band of Paiute Indians nearby, have long ties to this country, and the plateau's forests and meadows were important hunting and gathering ground, a cool refuge above the harsh deserts below.

Jacob Lake takes its name from Jacob Hamblin, a nineteenth-century Mormon settler and frontier envoy who traveled widely through this remote corner of the Arizona Strip, the isolated slice of Arizona north of the Grand Canyon. A small natural sinkhole pond nearby carried his name, and in time the crossroads did too. The country stayed remote and lightly settled, its main business the forest, grazing, and, eventually, the travelers headed for the newly protected canyon rim to the south.

From Jacob Lake, a highway runs south across the plateau to the Grand Canyon's North Rim, and that road is the whole reason the crossroads matters to travelers. The North Rim is the canyon's higher, cooler, far quieter side, drawing only a small share of the visitors who crowd the South Rim, and Jacob Lake is its front porch, the place people fuel up, grab a meal, and get their bearings before the final push to the edge.

The drive from here to the rim is a pleasure in itself, winding through pine forest, aspen groves, and open meadows where deer graze and wildflowers bloom in summer. Because the North Rim closes for winter when snow buries the plateau, Jacob Lake also marks the seasonal rhythm of the whole area, busy and green in summer and fall, and quiet under snow once the rim road shuts for the year.

The Kaibab Plateau is a rich island of high-country life above the desert. Its forests of ponderosa pine, fir, spruce, and aspen shelter mule deer in large numbers, wild turkeys, and the striking Kaibab squirrel, a tassel-eared squirrel with a black belly and white tail found only on this plateau. In the meadows, wildflowers bloom through the warm months and deer come out to graze at dawn and dusk.

Mountain lions and coyotes range through the woods, mostly unseen, and hawks and the occasional California condor ride the air currents overhead. The plateau's isolation and elevation make it feel far from the arid land all around, a cool, green world of forest and meadow where the wildlife belongs more to the mountains than to the desert.

Summer is the heart of the season at Jacob Lake, when the plateau is green, the meadows bloom, and the road to the North Rim is open. The high elevation keeps the air pleasantly cool even when the desert below is baking, making it a welcome escape from the heat.

Fall is beautiful and quiet, with the aspen turning gold and the first crisp nights, and it is a fine time to make the North Rim run before the closure. Once winter arrives, deep snow shuts the rim road and blankets the plateau, and Jacob Lake settles into a cold, still, off-season hush, reachable but far quieter, until spring reopens the road south.

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