On May 10, 1869, the rails from the East and the West met at Promontory Summit in northern Utah, a golden spike was driven, and for the first time you could cross the country by train. That single point ties together most of what Utah is about: a crossroads of red-rock country, Ancestral Puebloan villages, Mormon pioneer settlement, and engineering that reshaped the West.
I spent a career teaching history before joining my sons at More Than Just Parks, and few states hold as much human and natural history in one place: the Mighty Five national parks, ancient cliff dwellings, and some of the darkest night skies left in the country. These are the 20 Utah landmarks I would send you to, counted down from number 20.
Utah Landmarks At A Glance
Here is a quick comparison of all 20 landmarks before we dig into the stories behind each one.
| Landmark | Type | Region |
|---|---|---|
| Zion National Park | National Park (NPS) | Southwest Utah |
| Grand Staircase-Escalante NM | National Monument (BLM) | South-central Utah |
| Arches National Park | National Park (NPS) | Near Moab |
| Monument Valley | Navajo Tribal Park | Utah-Arizona border |
| Capitol Reef National Park | National Park (NPS) | South-central Utah |
| Bears Ears National Monument | National Monument (BLM/USFS) | Southeast Utah |
| Golden Spike NHP | National Historical Park (NPS) | Promontory |
| Dinosaur National Monument | National Monument (NPS) | Utah-Colorado border |
| Parowan Gap Petroglyphs | Rock art site (BLM) | Near Parowan |
| Natural Bridges National Monument | National Monument (NPS) | Southeast Utah |
| Natural History Museum of Utah | Museum | Salt Lake City |
| Jurassic National Monument | National Monument (BLM) | Emery County |
| Bonneville Salt Flats | Salt flats (BLM) | Near Wendover |
| The Beehive House | Historic house (NHL) | Salt Lake City |
| Rainbow Bridge National Monument | National Monument (NPS) | Near Lake Powell |
| Topaz War Relocation Center | WWII incarceration site (NHL) | Near Delta |
| This Is the Place Heritage Park | State heritage park | Salt Lake City |
| Historic South Temple Street | Historic district | Salt Lake City |
| Alkali Ridge | Ancestral Puebloan site (NHL) | San Juan County |
| St. Mark’s Episcopal Cathedral | Historic cathedral | Salt Lake City |
For deeper guides, see our roundup of all Utah national parks and the best historic sites in Utah.
117 public lands destinations are under threat. Get the free briefing that 27,000+ people use to stay informed and take action.
20. St. Mark’s Episcopal Cathedral
St. Mark’s Cathedral in Salt Lake City is a reminder that Utah’s religious history reaches beyond its Latter-day Saint majority. The Gothic Revival church, built in the early 1870s, is one of the oldest non-Mormon houses of worship in the state.
The congregation laid the cornerstone in 1870, and the sandstone church opened a few years later under Episcopal missionary bishop Daniel Tuttle. It became the official cathedral of the Episcopal Diocese of Utah in 1994. The building’s stained glass and stonework make it a quiet architectural gem on a busy downtown block.
19. Alkali Ridge
Alkali Ridge in San Juan County is a National Historic Landmark protecting the remains of Ancestral Puebloan villages built more than a thousand years ago. It is one of the most important archaeological districts in the Southwest.
Excavations here in the 1930s helped archaeologists work out the sequence of early Puebloan culture, and the site gives its name to a phase of that history. The ridge holds the buried remains of multiple village sites dating roughly from 700 to 1200 CE. It was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1964. The setting is remote and the ruins are unexcavated and undeveloped, so it appeals most to those drawn to deep history and quiet country.
18. Historic South Temple Street
South Temple Street is the grand boulevard of Salt Lake City, lined with mansions, churches, and civic buildings from the era when mining and railroad fortunes met pioneer Salt Lake. It is a National Register historic district.
The street runs east from Temple Square past landmarks like the Kearns Mansion, now the Utah governor’s residence, the Cathedral of the Madeleine, and the First Presbyterian Church. Many of the homes were built by silver-mining millionaires in the late 1800s and early 1900s. A walk along South Temple is the best architectural tour in the city.
17. This Is the Place Heritage Park
This Is the Place Heritage Park sits on 50 acres at the mouth of Emigration Canyon, where Brigham Young is said to have looked over the valley in 1847 and declared, “This is the right place.” It marks the end of the Mormon pioneer trail.
The park centers on the This Is the Place Monument, dedicated in 1947 on the 100th anniversary of the pioneers’ arrival, and a living-history village of relocated and reconstructed 19th-century buildings. Costumed interpreters demonstrate pioneer trades, and the site also acknowledges the Native peoples and other groups who shaped early Utah. It is a popular family destination beside the foothills.
16. Topaz War Relocation Center
The Topaz War Relocation Center near Delta is one of the most sobering sites in Utah. During World War II the U.S. government imprisoned more than 11,000 Japanese Americans here, most of them U.S. citizens, behind barbed wire in the desert.
Opened in 1942 following President Roosevelt’s Executive Order 9066, Topaz held families forced from their homes on the West Coast solely because of their ancestry. For a time it was one of the largest population centers in Utah. The camp closed in 1945. The barren site is now a National Historic Landmark, and the Topaz Museum in Delta preserves artifacts, artwork, and the stories of those who were held there. It endures as a warning against repeating that injustice.
15. Rainbow Bridge National Monument
Rainbow Bridge is one of the largest natural bridges in the world, a salmon-pink span of sandstone arcing 290 feet above a side canyon near Lake Powell. It is sacred to several Native nations of the region.
President William Howard Taft proclaimed Rainbow Bridge a national monument in 1910. For the Navajo, Hopi, and other peoples it is a place of deep spiritual meaning, and the Park Service asks visitors not to walk beneath the span out of respect. Most travelers reach it by boat across Lake Powell followed by a short walk, since the land routes are long backcountry treks. It is managed by the National Park Service.
14. The Beehive House
The Beehive House in downtown Salt Lake City was the official residence of Brigham Young, leader of the Latter-day Saints and the first governor of Utah Territory. The 1854 adobe-and-frame mansion takes its name from the beehive sculpture on its roof, a pioneer symbol of industry.
Young lived here as territorial governor and church president, and the house served partly as an official residence where he received guests and conducted business. It is a National Historic Landmark, restored with period furnishings, and it sits beside the related Lion House on South Temple. Free guided tours interpret pioneer-era Salt Lake and Young’s complex legacy.
13. Bonneville Salt Flats
The Bonneville Salt Flats stretch in a blinding white plain near the Nevada border, the dried bed of an ancient lake and the fastest place on earth. Land-speed records have been set on this hard salt crust for more than a century.
The flats are what remains of Lake Bonneville, the vast Ice Age lake that once covered much of western Utah. As it dried, it left a crust of salt and minerals across roughly 30,000 acres. The Bonneville Speedway hosts Speed Week each summer, where racers chase records on the long straightaways. Managed by the Bureau of Land Management, the flats are also a surreal spot for photography, especially when a thin layer of water turns them into a mirror.
12. Jurassic National Monument
Jurassic National Monument, at the Cleveland-Lloyd Dinosaur Quarry in Emery County, holds one of the densest concentrations of Jurassic-period dinosaur bones ever found. More than 12,000 bones have come out of the ground here.
The quarry is unusual for being dominated by meat-eaters: more than three-quarters of the bones belong to predators, especially the fierce Allosaurus, which is now Utah’s state fossil. Scientists still debate why so many predators died in one place. Congress designated the 850-acre Jurassic National Monument in 2019, and the Bureau of Land Management runs the visitor center and quarry, where you can see bones still embedded in the rock.
11. Natural History Museum of Utah
The Natural History Museum of Utah, in its dramatic copper-clad building above Salt Lake City, holds one of the great dinosaur collections in the country and tells the deep story of the region’s land and peoples.
The museum opened its current home, the Rio Tinto Center in the foothills above the University of Utah, in 2011. Its paleontology hall showcases dinosaurs unearthed across the state, including many horned species first described from Utah rock. Other galleries cover Native cultures, the Great Salt Lake, and the geology of the Colorado Plateau, with a rooftop terrace that frames the whole valley.
10. Natural Bridges National Monument
Natural Bridges National Monument was Utah’s first national monument, protecting three enormous stone bridges carved by streams in a remote corner of southeast Utah. It is also one of the darkest night-sky places in the country.
President Theodore Roosevelt proclaimed the monument in 1908. Its three bridges carry Hopi names, Sipapu, Kachina, and Owachomo, honoring the Ancestral Puebloans who farmed and built here. Unlike wind-carved arches, these bridges were cut by flowing water in the canyons of White and Armstrong creeks. In 2007 it became the world’s first International Dark Sky Park, and on a clear night the Milky Way arches overhead as vividly as anywhere on the continent.
9. Parowan Gap Petroglyphs
The Parowan Gap is a natural wind gap in a low ridge near Parowan whose rock faces are covered with hundreds of petroglyphs, one of the richest concentrations of rock art in the Great Basin.
The carvings were left over many centuries by Native peoples, including the ancestors of today’s Southern Paiute, and some appear to track the movement of the sun through the gap across the year. Geometric shapes, animals, and human figures crowd the dark basalt. The site is managed by the Bureau of Land Management with interpretive signs, and it remains a place of cultural importance to Native nations.
8. Dinosaur National Monument
Dinosaur National Monument straddles the Utah-Colorado border and protects both a world-famous wall of dinosaur fossils and more than 200,000 acres of canyon country along the Green and Yampa rivers.
The Utah side holds the Quarry Exhibit Hall, a building constructed right over a sandstone wall studded with about 1,500 dinosaur bones left in place for visitors to see. President Woodrow Wilson set aside the original quarry as a monument in 1915, and it was greatly expanded in 1938 to take in the surrounding canyons. Beyond the bones, the monument offers whitewater rafting, ancient petroglyphs, and some of the most rugged scenery in the region.
7. Golden Spike National Historical Park
Golden Spike National Historical Park at Promontory Summit marks the spot where the first transcontinental railroad was completed on May 10, 1869, joining the nation coast to coast. It is one of the pivotal places in American history.
Here the Central Pacific, built largely by Chinese immigrant laborers pushing east, met the Union Pacific coming west, and a ceremonial golden spike joined the rails. The site was first set aside in 1957 and established as Golden Spike National Historic Site in 1965, then redesignated a National Historical Park in 2019. Working replicas of the locomotives Jupiter and No. 119 steam out to the meeting point in season, and the park stages reenactments of the famous moment.
6. Bears Ears National Monument
Bears Ears National Monument protects a vast cultural landscape in southeast Utah, named for a pair of buttes that rise like ears on the horizon. It is one of the richest concentrations of Native American archaeological sites in the country and the first national monument championed by a coalition of tribes.
The land holds cliff dwellings, kivas, granaries, and rock art left by Ancestral Puebloan and other peoples over thousands of years, and it remains sacred to the Hopi, Navajo, Ute Mountain Ute, Ute, and Zuni nations. President Barack Obama proclaimed the monument in December 2016 after years of advocacy by the Bears Ears Inter-Tribal Coalition. President Donald Trump slashed its boundaries in 2017, and President Joe Biden restored the full monument in October 2021. Much of it is rugged backcountry on BLM and Forest Service land. Visit with care, and leave every artifact where it lies.
Top 5 Utah Landmarks
5. Capitol Reef National Park
Capitol Reef is the quiet member of Utah’s Mighty Five national parks, built around the Waterpocket Fold, a 100-mile wrinkle in the earth’s crust. Add in historic orchards and dark skies and you have one of the most rewarding parks in the state. See our full guide to Capitol Reef.
The Waterpocket Fold exposes layers of rock laid down over 200 million years, eroded into domes, cliffs, and canyons. One white sandstone dome reminded early visitors of the U.S. Capitol, giving the park its name. Mormon settlers planted fruit orchards in the green oasis of Fruita along the Fremont River, and visitors can still pick apples and peaches in season. Capitol Reef is a certified International Dark Sky Park, and the Cathedral Valley and Cassidy Arch are among its highlights.
4. Monument Valley
Monument Valley is the iconic landscape of the American West, its red sandstone buttes rising from the desert floor along the Utah-Arizona border. It is a Navajo Tribal Park, owned and managed by the Navajo Nation.
The towering mesas and slender spires have appeared in countless films and photographs, shaping the world’s image of the West, especially through the Westerns of director John Ford. But this is a living homeland, not a movie set. The Navajo Nation operates the tribal park, and a scenic drive and guided tours led by Navajo guides take visitors among the formations while respecting the families who still live and herd here.
3. Arches National Park
Arches National Park near Moab holds the densest collection of natural stone arches on earth, more than 2,000 of them, including the slender Delicate Arch that adorns Utah’s license plates. Our full guide covers the best things to do at Arches.
Native peoples lived in and traveled through this region for thousands of years. The area was first protected as a national monument in 1929 and elevated to a national park in 1971. Wind, water, and the slow flexing of an underground salt bed sculpted the fins and arches over millions of years. Beyond Delicate Arch, the Windows, Landscape Arch in the Devils Garden, and Balanced Rock draw visitors, and the park is a designated International Dark Sky Park for night-sky viewing.
2. Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument
Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument is a vast, wild expanse of south-central Utah, larger than all five Utah national parks combined. Its cliffs, canyons, and plateaus remain some of the most remote country in the lower 48.
President Bill Clinton created the monument in 1996, and at about 1.87 million acres it dwarfs the parks. It rises in a series of giant rock steps, the Grand Staircase, from the bottom of the Grand Canyon north toward Bryce. President Trump cut the monument roughly in half in 2017, and President Biden restored its full boundaries in October 2021. Managed by the Bureau of Land Management, it offers slot canyons like those near Escalante, the waterfalls of Calf Creek, and world-class fossil beds, with very few services, so come prepared.
1. Zion National Park
Our number one Utah landmark is Zion National Park, where the Virgin River has carved a canyon of 2,000-foot sandstone walls in glowing reds and creams. It is one of the most visited and most beloved national parks in the country. See our full guide to things to do at Zion.
People have lived in this canyon for thousands of years, and Mormon settlers gave it the name Zion, a place of refuge. President William Howard Taft first protected it as Mukuntuweap National Monument in 1909, it was renamed Zion in 1918, and it became a national park in 1919. Today visitors ride a shuttle up the canyon to hike legendary trails: the Narrows wading up the river itself, the dizzying chains of Angels Landing, and the gentler Emerald Pools. The towering walls and hanging gardens make it unforgettable.
The Full Ranking
- Zion National Park
- Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument
- Arches National Park
- Monument Valley
- Capitol Reef National Park
- Bears Ears National Monument
- Golden Spike National Historical Park
- Dinosaur National Monument
- Parowan Gap Petroglyphs
- Natural Bridges National Monument
- Natural History Museum of Utah
- Jurassic National Monument
- Bonneville Salt Flats
- The Beehive House
- Rainbow Bridge National Monument
- Topaz War Relocation Center
- This Is the Place Heritage Park
- Historic South Temple Street
- Alkali Ridge
- St. Mark’s Episcopal Cathedral
You should know that this guide does not come out of thin air. More Than Just Parks is a family operation. My sons Will and Jim have spent their adult lives exploring and filming America’s national parks and public lands destinations, working with the National Park Service, the Department of the Interior, the USDA, and the U.S. Forest Service along the way. In 2018, after a career teaching history, I joined them to help tell the stories behind these places.
Helpful Related Articles
Utah National Parks: All of Utah’s National Parks Ranked
Historic Sites in Utah: The Best Historic Sites in Utah
Things to Do at Zion: Best Things to Do at Zion National Park
Things to Do at Arches: Best Things to Do at Arches National Park
Things to Do at Capitol Reef: Best Things to Do at Capitol Reef National Park
Things to Do at Bryce Canyon: Best Things to Do at Bryce Canyon National Park
Things to Do at Canyonlands: Best Things to Do at Canyonlands National Park
Natural Bridges Guide: Natural Bridges National Monument Guide
