Day trips from Richfield, 30 to 90 minutes out.

Point the car west on I-70 and inside half an hour you pass two of the most surprising stops in the region. First, about twenty-one miles out at exit 17, Fremont Indian State Park fills Clear Creek Canyon. In 1983, crews cutting a hillside for the interstate uncovered the largest Fremont culture village ever excavated, more than a hundred structures and hundreds of rock-art panels, and the state built the park and museum to protect what was left. It is roughly twenty-five minutes from town, and the region's full Fremont Indian State Park guide goes deeper.

Keep going to the western end of I-70, about thirty-eight miles out, and you reach Cove Fort, a fort of black volcanic rock built in 1867 to shelter travelers on the road between Fillmore and Beaver. It still stands with its twelve rooms restored to the way they looked in the 1870s, and the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, which owns it, runs free guided tours daily.

South on US-89, about eighteen miles down toward Marysvale, the highway rounds a hillside of raw yellow, orange, and white rock called Big Rock Candy Mountain. Railroad workers named it, and an old hobo song made the name stick; today there is a small resort, the Sevier River, and a rail-trail at its foot. It sits near the Piute county line by Marysvale, not in Richfield, but it is one of the prettiest short drives out of town.

North about thirty-four miles, in Gunnison, the Casino Star Theatre still screens first-run movies from a Main Street building that has shown films for more than a century, which by most accounts makes it one of the oldest continuously operating movie houses in the state. Gunnison also hides the Sanpitch Dragon, a long tile mosaic under the highway bridge that rumbles when cars cross overhead. Both belong to Gunnison; the practical picture of that town is on the Gunnison city guide.

Southeast, about an hour out by way of SR-24 and SR-25, Fish Lake spreads across a high basin in the Fishlake National Forest. It is one of the largest natural mountain lakes in Utah, a cold-water fishery ringed by aspen that turn gold in late September, with a historic lodge on the shore. The road climbs, so it is a summer-into-fall drive and winter closes much of it. The region's full Fish Lake guide covers the lake, the fishing, and the aspen in detail.

South about fifty miles on US-89, in the small ranch town of Circleville, a restored log cabin was the boyhood home of Robert LeRoy Parker, better known as the outlaw Butch Cassidy. The cabin is open to visitors as a roadside historic site, a plain frontier homestead that tells the early, local half of his story. It is Circleville's, not Richfield's, and it makes a natural stop on the same US-89 drive that passes Big Rock Candy Mountain.

The farthest of the easy runs is also the biggest payoff. Drive east on SR-24, about sixty-two miles to Torrey and eight more to the gate, and you are at Capitol Reef National Park, the red-rock canyon country of the Waterpocket Fold, the historic Fruita orchards, and the park Scenic Drive. From Richfield it is roughly an hour and a half each way, which makes it a full day rather than an afternoon, but it is close enough that people here treat a national park as a day out rather than a vacation.

Torrey, the gateway town eight miles short of the entrance, holds the lodging and the restaurants near the park. Richfield is the last big-grocery and full-service stop before the road turns quiet, which is exactly why the town works as a basecamp for the whole southern half of this map.