Last updated: October 17, 2026
Place
City of Rocks National Reserve, the California Trail
Photo/L. Kreutzer
Quick Facts
Location:
The park visitor center is at 3035 Elba-Almo Rd in the community of Almo, ID GPS 42.090550 -113.632616 The reserve entrance is on E City of Rocks Loop Rd, about 2 miles southwest of the visitor center. GPS 42.083754 -113.671935
Significance:
“Silent City of Rocks,” today a national reserve recognized for its cultural and natural significance, was a notable landmark along the California Trail through Idaho. It was also an important resource area for Northern Shoshone and Bannock people, who sometimes clashed with emigrants here.
Designation:
Historic site on the California National Historic Trail; National Reserve, National Historic Landmark
Amenities
21 listed
Accessible Sites, Benches/Seating, Cellular Signal, Fire Pit, Historical/Interpretive Information/Exhibits, Information - Maps Available, Information - Ranger/Staff Member Present, Internet/WiFi Available, Junior Ranger Booklet Available, Parking - Auto, Parking - Bus/RV, Pets Allowed, Picnic Table, Restroom - Accessible, Scenic View/Photo Spot, Shelter/Cabin, Tent Campsites, Toilet - Flush, Toilet - Vault/Composting, Trailhead, Water - Drinking/Potable
Visitors to City of Rocks National Reserve, located 2 miles west of Almo in southern Idaho, will experience a remarkable landscape that has changed very little since the mid-1800s.
Established in 1988 and co-managed by the National Park Service and the Idaho Department of Parks and Recreation, the reserve is celebrated for its scenic beauty, geology, and historical importance. It is a unit of the National Park System, a National Historic Landmark, a National Natural Landmark, an International Dark Sky Park, and a cultural landscape of tremendous significance to Northern Shoshone and Bannock people.
Stretching roughly 6 miles long by 2 miles wide, the reserve is encircled by fantastically weathered granite formations that captured the imaginations of emigrants traveling the California Trail. These travelers named it “City of Rocks” because the spires, domes, blocks, and fins of this wild, remote landscape reminded them of structures from the world they had left behind.
“There were sphynxes and statues of every size,” wrote Forty-niner Bernard J. Reid, “and haystacks and wigwams and castles, and towers, and pyramids and cones and projecting turrets and canopies, and leaning columns and so on throughout a thousand varieties of fantastic shapes.”
Another Forty-niner, J. Goldsborough Bruff, saw houses, castles, caverns, and “gigantic fungii, petrified.” Helen Carpenter, traveling in 1857, imagined “everything . . .from a dog house to a church and courthouse.” Hundreds of emigrants carved or wrote their names—often in axle grease—on rocks near the road, and the passage of tens of thousands of wagons, stagecoaches, and livestock left behind ruts and swales that remain visible today. The reserve now interprets these and other historical features for visitors.
The heavy flow of emigrants beginning in 1843, which increased dramatically through the California Gold Rush, disrupted the lives of Shoshone and Bannock people who had hunted, camped, and collected pine nuts in this area for thousands of years. In 1862, warriors led by Shoshone Chief Pocatello began resisting the intrusions, striking fear into the hearts of passing travelers. Unable to halt the migration, Pocatello settled his people on the Fort Hall Reservation in 1868. Descendants of the Northern Shoshone and Bannock bands at Fort Hall still consider City of Rocks an important cultural site and return each fall to harvest pine nuts.
Today, City of Rocks National Reserve offers a wide range of recreational opportunities, including driving tours, hiking, rock climbing, camping, mountain biking, cross-country skiing, and snowshoeing. For maps and trip-planning resources, visit the park website and stop by the Ranger and Information Station at the south end of Almo.
Site Information
Location (The park visitor center is at 3035 Elba-Almo Rd in the community of Almo, ID. GPS 42.090550 -113.632616
The reserve entrance is on E City of Rocks Loop Rd, about 2 miles southwest of the visitor center. GPS 42.083754 -113.671935)
City of Rocks National Reserve
California National Historic Trail