Piute County

06/01/2026

05/30/2026

05/23/2026

🍦Sweet news!! We are now serving soft serve ice cream! Stop by today and treat yourself to a creamy cup or a crispy cone - the perfect way to cool off and satisfy your sweet tooth during your day at the lake! 🌞🍦

05/22/2026

Delano Peak: 12,174 Feet. Ancient Volcano. Best Views in Southern Utah.

The High Plateaus of the Colorado Plateau do not always get the recognition they deserve relative to Utah's more famous canyon terrain. The Tushar Mountains, rising to 12,174 feet at Delano Peak above Marysvale, are part of that underappreciated category.

The Tushars formed from an ancient volcanic system. The resulting geology is darker rock, more dramatic in elevation change, with subalpine terrain above the mining corridors that made this part of Piute County economically significant for half a century.

Delano Peak is the highest point in the High Plateaus section of the Colorado Plateau, which covers an enormous swath of southern Utah, northern Arizona, and western Colorado. The view from the summit resets your sense of scale. Southern Utah opens up in a way that even people who know it find surprising.

The Tushars are accessible via Fishlake National Forest roads from both the Marysvale and Beaver sides. High-country access is typically July through September. The same terrain becomes snowmobile country in winter.

The Paiute ATV Trail runs through Tushar terrain, reaching above 10,000 feet on some sections, with ridge views that trail riders consistently rate among the system's best. Riders report seeing hundreds of miles from those ridges on clear days.

Ancient volcanic geology. 12,174 feet. Views over the Colorado Plateau. The Tushars are Piute County's high country and they deserve attention.

Photo courtesy of ADVENTR.co
This post written with the assistance of AI

05/22/2026

Big Rock Candy Mountain in Marysvale Canyon looks exactly like the name suggests.

The mineral staining iron oxides, sulfurous deposits, layers of yellow and white against the canyon walls creates one of the most visually unusual geological formations along any highway in Utah. It is not photoshopped. It has always looked like that.

The folk song came separately. Harry McClintock recorded "Big Rock Candy Mountain" in 1928, describing a hobo's paradise where the handouts grow on bushes. Whether the song was directly inspired by this Utah formation is a great debate with an interesting answer and no final proof.

It is on US-89. Free to see. Impossible to miss. Pull over and take the picture.

https://maps.app.goo.gl/oZuwfFCXdoSxKVbk7

05/21/2026

Otter Creek State Park near Antimony sits on the Pacific Migratory Bird Flyway.

That means spring and fall bring a parade of birds using one of the continent's major migration corridors, stopping over at a reservoir in rural Piute County because it is exactly where they need to be.

Bald eagles nest at Otter Creek. American white pelicans stop through. Osprey, peregrine falcons, golden eagles, northern harriers. The birding is, by any measure, exceptional.

If you came for the fishing, the birds are free. If you came for the birds, the fishing is an excellent bonus.

★★★★★ · State park

02/13/2026

The reservoir is open water! The ice is gone and the fishing is great!

01/16/2026

Welcome, Superintendent Strate.