Kodachrome Basin State Park

The most distinctive feature of Kodachrome Basin is its cluster of stone spires, tall columns of hardened rock that rise abruptly from the surrounding softer stone. Geologists call these formations sand pipes, and they are thought to have formed when ancient underground springs or gas forced sand and sediment up through the rock layers, where it hardened into pipe-like plugs. Over long ages the softer rock around them eroded away, leaving the harder pipes standing exposed.

What makes Kodachrome special is how many of these spires it holds and how well developed they are, a concentration found in very few places anywhere. Scattered across the basin, ranging from squat stumps to slender towers, they give the park a strange, sculptural quality, and following the trails among them feels like walking through a gallery of shapes no one designed.

The park owes its name to a National Geographic Society expedition that came through in the 1940s. The crew was so taken with the intense reds, pinks, whites, and golds of the cliffs that they named the place Kodachrome Flat, after the vivid color film they were using. The name stuck, and when Utah later made the basin a state park, it kept the tribute, a rare case of a landscape named for the film that captured it.

The colors that so impressed those photographers come from the different rock layers and the minerals within them, mostly iron and other elements that stain the sandstone in bands. In the low, warm light of morning and evening the whole basin seems to glow, and it is easy to see why the crew reached for the name of the most color-rich film they knew.

This high red-rock country is the ancestral homeland of the Southern Paiute and Ute peoples, who traveled and lived across these canyons and plateaus for generations and whose descendants remain in the region today. The Ancestral Puebloan and Fremont peoples camped and farmed in the wider area far earlier, leaving traces across the Grand Staircase country.

Mormon pioneers settled the small farming towns nearby, Cannonville, Henrieville, and Tropic, in the late 1800s, ranching and farming in a difficult, beautiful land. The basin itself stayed little known until the National Geographic visit brought it attention, and it became a state park in the 1960s, preserving both its color and its remarkable spires for visitors passing through the region.

A network of easy and moderate trails loops through the basin, threading among the cliffs, spires, and desert scrub, and rewarding walkers with new views and formations at every turn. Because the park is compact and the trails gentle, it is a fine place to explore on foot without a hard hike, and its quiet, uncrowded feel is a welcome change from the busier parks nearby. Desert wildlife shares the basin, from mule deer, jackrabbits, and lizards to coyotes, ravens, and hawks riding the cliffs.

Spring and fall are the best seasons, with warm days, cool nights, and comfortable hiking, while summer is hotter in the sun though tempered by the high elevation. Winter is cold and quiet, and a dusting of snow on the colored cliffs and spires makes for a striking, rarely seen scene. In any season, the basin is at its most beautiful in the low light of early morning and late afternoon, when its colors deepen and glow.

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