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Travel and finding peace
Utah Highway 12
The road to Boulder, where kindness and wilderness share one highway
Drive through Utah and you can imagine you’ve traveled to the moon, Mars, and maybe Venus. There are places that look as though you are about to pass through the gates of hell and others that evoke heaven. Utah Highway 12 cuts a 124-mile swath through the state and embodies all of that and more.
The highway, if you can call it that, was a Depression-era Civilian Conservation Corps public works project, built between 1935 and 1940. It is a single ribbon of road connecting otherwise isolated villages and farmers in a way never before possible. A marker at the Larb Hollow Overlook says the Escalante River and Henry Mountains were the last river and mountain range to be mapped in the lower 48 by our government.
The road begins near Bryce Canyon, where rocks stand in orange and pink columns looking like a giant chorus frozen in place. As you continue to the northeast you pass small hamlets, which eventually give way to the vastness of the Grand Staircase country. It’s wide open country unspoiled by road signs or people, until you hit the midway point. The small town of Escalante rises like an oasis, with gas stations and restaurants, schools and a medical clinic springing from the wilds…
