THE ROADS TO BRYCE

A meaner, more difficult bit of road would be hard to find than the major portion of this trip.... A series of ditches, ruts, stony and sandy stretches, rocky fords and steep banks engaged our driver's attention.

—Thomas Murphy, 1922 visitor to Bryce Canyon

In 1922, Cedar City served as a departure point to both Zion National Park and Bryce Canyon. Visitors to Bryce braved the long pioneer road from Paragonah, developed some 50 years earlier but improved little since that time. Three years later, Thomas Murphy returned for another visit and wrote:

... the road was not the savage trail that bumped over rocks, plunged through sand and forded creeks. Instead a perfectly smooth, well-engineered highway ran in graceful curves through the famous Red Canyon. ...

The road to Bryce Canyon National Park, now Utah Highway 12, continues to carry visitors through two auto tunnels in Dixie National Forest's Red Canyon. View, ca. 1929. ZNP.

The changes Murphy noted grew out of an ambitious state program, funded partially with new federal aid, to replace old roads with modern highways. The state abandoned the old road from Paragonah to Panguitch and constructed a new highway across the Markagunt Plateau along the same lines as today's Utah Highway 14, and completed a 3-mile spur from this highway to Cedar Breaks. By 1924, the U.S. Forest Service completed the Red Canyon Road, described by Murphy above, and a 2-mile segment of Bryce Canyon's Rim Road from Red Canyon Road to Bryce Canyon Lodge. By 1925, visitors from Cedar City to Zion or Bryce Canyon enjoyed well-designed, surfaced roads.

| next | back | stop |

| Introduction | Acadia | Blue Ridge Parkway | Colonial Parkway | Generals Highway | George Washington Memorial Parkway | Great Smoky Mountains | Mount Rainier | Rock Creek and Potomac Parkway | Shenandoah's Skyline Drive | Southwest Circle Tour | Vicksburg | Yellowstone | Yosemite | Discover History |