Southern Utah: America's Most Scenic Destination

Southern Utah, with its unique and dense compilation of scenic land formations, including rivers, mountains, pinnacles, plateaus, and byways, is very likely to have America's greatest concentration of natural scenic wonders. 

Where is the evidence?

I researched which American states have the most federally designated national parks, monuments, recreation areas, and scenic roads, calculated the square mileage for each state, and divided this space by the number of attractions. I also used the national parks service maps, at equal scale, to visually review the number of attractions per square mile. Using these two methods, the area that comprises southern Utah appears to come out ahead of any of the regions in the United States.

What are these attractions?

There are five scenic national parks all within a few hours of each other: Zion, Bryce, Capitol Reef, Canyonlands, and Arches. The Grand Staircase Escalante National Monument and Bears Ears National Monument are two of America's largest national monuments, and there are other scenic national monuments sprinkled throughout this area. Don't forget that Monument Valley Tribal Park. which includes the iconic scenery found in scores of movies, is also predominantly within the borders of Utah.

But what about an ocean?

Utah doesn't have boundless ocean coastlines, but Lake Powell, found within the immense Glen Canyon National Recreation Area, has approximately 2,000 miles of coastline, and that's more than the entire west coast of the United States.

Scenic Roads: Southern Utah is filled with scenic byways and backways, the most famous of which is the All-American Road—Scenic Byway 12—rated by Car & Driver magazine as one of America's top ten.

Scenic Rivers: The Green, Colorado, Dirty Devil, and San Juan rivers all flow through dramatically beautiful canyons and are some of the waterways that bring water to Lake Powell. 

State Parks: There is so much scenery in southern Utah that there are seven scenic state parks in this region: Snow Canyon, Coral Pink Sand Dunes, Goosenecks, Dead Horse Point, Goblin Valley, Kodachrome Basin, and Escalante Petrified Forest.

Unofficially Designated Scenery: Beyond the national and state designations, this region of Utah is filled with national forest and Bureau of Land Management terrain and formations, such as Factory Butte, the Moonscape, Bentonite Hills (Mars), Little Egypt, the San Rafael Swell, and so much more. If found in many other states, these would be nationally designated scenic attractions.

Who concurs?

In the 1990s, I performed work as a location scout for a German nature filmmaker who had filmed throughout the world, and he made this statement: “I've literally filmed every major scenic location in the world, and southern Utah is the best!”

Want more evidence?

There's more to this story at UtahGuide.com/Best.

All images courtesy of Mark Wade. © All rights reserved. 1/1/25.

Please view, like, comment, and share from these resources:

1- Facebook: Utah - America's #1

2- Instagram: America's Best

3- Youtube: Utah - America's #1

4- Utah Guide Blog: America's Most Scenic Destination