Utah's Scenic Highway 12: An Audio Driving Tour

Utah's scenic Highway 12 cuts through some of the most geologically dramatic landscapes in North America. On this self-guided driving tour, you'll journey through 250 million years of Earth's history, learning how volcanoes, ancient seas, and powerful faults sculpted the red rock country between Bryce Canyon and Capitol Reef. The tour starts at the Red Canyon Café parking lot near the Highway 89 junction. You'll drive through Red Canyon's hoodoo forests, cross the active Sevier Fault - one of the longest fault lines in the world - and traverse the Paunsaugunt Plateau. Along the way, you'll learn to identify ancient sand dunes, seafloor deposits, and river systems just by looking at the rock. The tour ends at the junction with Highway 24 in Torrey, on the edge of Capitol Reef National Park, where the oldest dinosaur - bearing rocks in the region await exploration.

1. 1

   Red Canyon

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   Drive into Red Canyon and find yourself immediately surrounded by dense forests of crimson hoodoos, their spires rising on both sides of the road in a dramatic natural gateway to the Colorado Plateau. Marvel at how these towering pillars of Claron Formation limestone were carved by the same geological forces at work in Bryce Canyon just a few miles to the east, offering a spectacular preview of the deep time journey ahead.

2. 2

   Bryce Canyon National Park

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   Pass the boundary of Bryce Canyon National Park and discover how a collapsed supervolcano created the precise conditions needed to produce thousands of hoodoos — a geological coincidence found nowhere else on Earth at this scale. Look out across the amphitheatres carved into the Paunsaugunt Plateau's edge and learn to read the alternating bands of red, orange, and white rock as chapters in a story spanning tens of millions of years.

3. 3

   Grand Staircase Escalante National Monument

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   Descend into the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument and experience one of the most extraordinary geological transitions on the continent, dropping through successive rock layers that carry you from the age of mammals down into the age of dinosaurs. Look out across the vast, colour-banded landscape and appreciate how this remote and largely roadless monument preserves one of the most complete stratigraphic records anywhere in North America.

4. 4

   Kodachrome Basin State Park

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   Drive past the turnoff for Kodachrome Basin State Park and learn how the sediment pipes rising from its floor — unlike anything else in Utah — were formed by ancient springs that hardened underground before the surrounding rock eroded away. Enjoy the vivid contrast of crimson spires and cream-coloured sand pipes against the open sky, a landscape so striking that the National Geographic Society named it after Kodak's famous colour film.

5. 5

   Dixie National Forest

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   Cross into the Dixie National Forest and feel the landscape shift dramatically as the elevation rises and ponderosa pines replace the red rock desert below. Drive through this high-country forest and learn how Boulder Mountain's volcanic cap protected the ancient rock beneath it from erosion, inverting the landscape over millions of years to turn what was once a valley floor into the highest plateau on the Colorado Plateau.

6. 6

   Escalante Petrified Forest State Park

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   Pass Escalante Petrified Forest State Park and discover how the ancient logs scattered across its slopes were buried by river sediments roughly 135 million years ago, their wood cells slowly replaced by silica until they became stone. Stop to appreciate how these fossilised trees preserve not just the remains of individual organisms, but an entire Jurassic floodplain ecosystem frozen in geological time.

7. 7

   Anasazi State Park Museum

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   Stop at Anasazi State Park Museum in Boulder and discover how one of the largest known Ancestral Puebloan village sites west of the Colorado River was uncovered here, its inhabitants sustained by the same landscapes you have been driving through all day. Explore how the people who lived here between roughly 1050 and 1200 CE read this terrain not as geology but as home, farming the benches above the Escalante River before mysteriously departing within a single generation.

8. 8

   Torrey

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   Arrive at Torrey at the junction of Highway 12 and Highway 24 and take in your position on the western edge of Capitol Reef National Park, where the Waterpocket Fold — a nearly hundred-mile wrinkle in the Earth's crust — pushes the oldest dinosaur-bearing rocks in the region to the surface. Reflect on the 250 million years of Earth history you have just driven through, from volcanic hoodoo forests to ancient seafloors to glacial mountain plateaus, all compressed into a single extraordinary road.

• Wheelchair accessible
• Service animals allowed
• Public transportation options are available nearby
• Transportation options are wheelchair accessible
• All areas and surfaces are wheelchair accessible
• Suitable for all physical fitness levels

For a full refund, cancel at least 24 hours before the scheduled departure time.