The creek canyon Centerville
The shaded creek canyon at the top of 100 South, and the three trailheads people keep mixing up
Deuel Creek, and the half mile between its two trailheads
Deuel Creek is the shaded canyon at the east end of 100 South in Centerville, and its trail is one of the best short hikes on the Davis bench: moving water within minutes, a rope swing, a waterfall, and a dozen or so log bridges. The catch is the trailheads. There are three of them off one dirt road, the north and south lots sit about half a mile apart, and the classic loop leaves you walking that half mile back to the car. Here is which lot is which, what the hike is actually like, and when to go.
By Scott Buehler, Moving Utah
Updated October 2026
The short answer
Deuel Creek is a shaded canyon hike above the top streets of Centerville that goes most of the year, and it is genuinely good: moving water within minutes, a rope swing, a waterfall, and a dozen or so log bridges on a trail that rarely climbs far from the stream. The thing to sort before you drive up is the trailheads. Three of them branch off one dirt road at the mouth of the canyon, the north and south lots sit about half a mile apart, and the standard outing goes up one branch and down the other, so you finish a half mile from where you parked. Decide which lot you want to come back to, and start there.
The three trailheads
One dirt road, three separate trailheads, and they are not interchangeable
The three trailheads start at different points, climb at different rates, and suit completely different amounts of time. Here is what each one actually gets you.
Almost every disagreement you will read about this canyon comes down to the trailheads. There are three, they all branch off the same dirt road, and they are not the same place. Every one of them starts from the corner of 850 East 100 South. From there you go east a tenth of a mile to a fork. Left on the dirt road, another tenth of a mile, and you are at the Deuel Creek North trailhead. Right instead, staying on the main dirt road for about a third of a mile, puts you at the open spot locals call the Bowl; carry on to the fork there, turn left, a tenth of a mile more, and that is the Deuel Creek South trailhead.
Here is the sentence that should lead every account of this hike and rarely does: the north and south trailheads are separate lots about half a mile apart on that dirt road. The classic outing goes up one branch and down the other, which means you come out half a mile from the car, on foot, at the end of the day. Plan for it, or park at the end you mean to finish at and take the climb.
The road is the other half of it. The last half mile toward the south trailhead is rough dirt, and a low clearance car is better left at the wide spot and walked in. Neither lot is paved. The north lot is the small one, up a short spur, and the first to fill; the south lot is a large signed pullout and the easier one to find on a first visit. On a warm weekend, that difference alone decides which end most people should start from.
| Deuel Creek North | Deuel Creek South | The Bowl | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Getting there | From 850 East 100 South, east 0.1 mile to the fork, then left on the dirt road for 0.1 mile | From 850 East 100 South, east 0.1 mile to the fork, right 0.35 mile to a second fork, then left for 0.1 mile | From 850 East 100 South, east 0.1 mile to the fork, then right and 0.35 mile along the main dirt road |
| The lot | Small, signed, up a short dirt spur, and the first to fill | A large signed pullout, the easier one to find on a first visit | Roadside on the dirt, not a defined lot, so it is easy to drive past |
| The walking | It climbs. About 0.9 mile runs above the creek with valley views before dropping in to join the main line | It stays with the water. A cascade within minutes of the car, and the log bridges start almost right away | Open bench ground rather than a canyon walk, and the way onto the shoreline path above town |
| Best for | The harder half of the loop, taken uphill, the way most people recommend | A short walk to moving water with no commitment, or the gentle descent at the end of a loop | A short evening circuit on the bench when the canyon is icy or the lots are full |
| The catch | Limited parking, and a steep, loose section near the trailhead entrance | The last half mile of road in is rough dirt; low clearance cars should walk it | Easy to drive right past, since it is a wide spot on the road rather than a marked trailhead |
If you walk the loop, you finish half a mile from your car, on a dirt road, at the end of the day. The two Deuel Creek trailheads are separate lots about half a mile apart on the same rough dirt road, and the standard outing goes up one branch and down the other. That is a good hike and a bad surprise. Decide before you set off which lot you are coming back to and start from that one, send someone for the car, or simply walk the same branch both ways. The road is the related caution: the last half mile toward the south trailhead is rough enough that a low clearance car is better left at the wide spot and walked in, and there is a steep, loose section right at the entrance. Neither trailhead has a restroom or a water tap, and both fill on a summer weekend.
The hike
A dozen log bridges, a rope swing, and a waterfall about half an hour past it
Once the trailheads are sorted, the hike itself is simple. Two branches leave the two lots, climb separately for something between half a mile and a mile, and meet. Above that junction there is one trail and it stays with the creek. End to end, the north to south loop runs 4.4 miles from about 4,627 feet to 6,095 feet, roughly 1,450 feet of climb, and three to four hours of walking.
Where the two branches meet is the one distance worth not pinning down. Depending on which lot you started from, the junction is somewhere between half a mile and a mile up, and you will know it when the trail stops being two trails.
Above the junction, two things to walk toward. A rope swing hangs over the creek about ten to fifteen minutes up, and it is what the kids on this trail are aiming for whether or not anyone told them so. The waterfall is roughly thirty minutes beyond the swing. That order is the useful part, because it lets a family decide at the swing whether there is another hour left in everyone, and no map hands you that.
The crossings are the character of the place. There are many log bridges the whole length of the hike, something like a dozen on the south branch alone, enough that keeping your feet dry is a feature of the trail rather than an accident. The creek is filterable the whole way, which is unusual enough to mention, and it is the reason the bridges are there: the trail stays with the water instead of climbing away from it.
The south branch is the gentle one, and it reaches moving water almost immediately, which makes it the better first visit with small children, since the payoff comes before anyone tires. The north branch climbs harder and gives you the valley on the way up. Most people go up the north side and down the south, so the descent is shadier and closer to the creek. That is a preference, not a rule, and it is also the version that leaves you half a mile from the car.
The details
Getting there
From I-15, take exit 319, Parrish Lane and 400 North, and drive east on 400 North to 400 East. Turn right, go south to 100 South, then left. The street twists before it reaches a T at the foot of the hill, and all three trailheads are reached from there on dirt. Do not confuse this with the Parrish Canyon approach, which leaves the same freeway exit but stays on 400 North to its dead end instead of turning south. Mixing up the two is the usual mistake made about Centerville's canyons.
Before you go
- Spring runoff is when the creek runs highest and the log bridges are least fun. Late summer and fall are the easy crossings.
- There is no restroom and no drinking water at any of the three trailheads. Centerville runs park water from mid-April through mid-October, and that is at the parks, not up here.
- You may see a 1.8 mile figure for this trail. That is one mapped segment, not the length of the hike.
- Dogs are allowed on a leash. The Davis canyons carry no watershed animal ban, and the Davis canyons page has the county rule in full.
Why it is called Deuel
A flour mill, a sawmill, and the reason the cattle came off the slope above you
This creek is not scenery that happens to sit near a town. It is the reason the town is where it is. Anson Call built a flour mill on Deuel Creek around 1852, and the settlement's first sawmill sat at the mouth of this canyon, run by Billie Williams. Before either of those, Samuel Parrish had bought two large stones out of the canyon in the winter of 1848 to 1849 and ground wheat with them. Every industrial thing the settlement could do in its first five years, it did with water off this hillside.
The creek also carried the family name that stuck. Thomas Grover arrived in the fall of 1847 and settled on the stream; Osmyn and William Deuel came in 1848 and the settlement took their name; Aaron Cherry then bought out Grover's claim and renamed it Cherry Creek; and by 1849 the surveyors had written down Centreville and the argument was over. The creek kept the Deuel name anyway, which is why a canyon, a trail, a historic house on 200 East and an irrigation company that still writes to its shareholders all carry a surname that lasted about a year as the name of the town.
The hillside above the trailheads used to be grazed, and the reason it is not grazed now is written into the trail. Canyon floods in 1923 and 1930 did real damage in Centerville. Once grazing on the mountainside was found to be the cause, cattle and sheep were kept off the foothills, and by 1935 a watershed area was drawn and grazing on the face was ended. The wider version, including the contour terraces cut across the whole face of the range in that decade, belongs to the Davis canyons page rather than being repeated here.
What that history leaves you with on the ground is a canyon whose bottom is a working watercourse rather than a preserved one, with a debris basin at its mouth and an irrigation company still drawing on it. That is a mover's subject more than a hiker's, and it sits on the moving here page with its dates attached.
Every industrial thing this settlement could manage in its first five years, it managed with water off one hillside. The trail you are walking is the supply line.
Living below it
A canyon at the end of the street is an amenity and a set of questions at the same time
For a household on the top streets of Centerville, Deuel Creek is a fifteen minute walk rather than a drive, and that changes what it is. It stops being an outing and becomes a Tuesday. That is the real case for the bench here, and it is about geography, not about anyone who lives on it. There are no fees and no permits; the constraint is parking, and the people who live nearest have mostly stopped driving to it, which tells you something.
A bench address near the canyon comes with a few specifics worth knowing before you buy. Centerville restricts personal fireworks on the east bench through July, and the canyon mouths sit inside that line. Which secondary irrigation system reaches a given garden, and what the debris basin at the canyon mouth was built to hold, are questions that change parcel by parcel. Those, and the rest of the homework, sit on the moving here page.
The east bench also has its own weather. The canyon wind that funnels down these draws can come up hard on a winter night, and it is a real part of living on the top streets rather than a rare event, so it is worth a plain mention to anyone weighing a house up here. What this page leaves alone, on purpose, is everything above the canyon. Skyline Drive runs the crest of the range behind a seasonal Forest Service gate, and the terraces cut in horizontal lines across the mountain are a 1930s erosion control project. Those, the countywide dog rule, and the eight canyon inventory this one belongs to are written once on the Davis canyons page, rather than copied worse here.
Scott Buehler
Moving Utah About Scott
Quick answers
Deuel Creek, answered
There are three, and they all branch off one dirt road at the east end of 100 South. All three start from the same corner, at 850 East 100 South. From there, go east a tenth of a mile to a fork. Turn left onto the dirt road and go another tenth of a mile for the Deuel Creek North trailhead. Turn right and stay on the main dirt road for about a third of a mile to reach the open spot locals call the Bowl; carry on to the next fork, turn left, and go a tenth of a mile more for the Deuel Creek South trailhead. The north and south lots are separate, and they sit about half a mile apart.
The full north to south loop runs 4.4 miles, climbing from about 4,627 feet to 6,095 feet, which is roughly 1,450 feet of gain, and it takes most people three to four hours. Shorter versions work fine. The south branch reaches a cascade within minutes of the trailhead, and the waterfall above the junction is a two to three hour round trip. You may see a 1.8 mile figure attached to this trail; that is one mapped segment, not the length of the hike.
Yes, above the point where the two branches meet. The useful part, which almost no map spells out, is the order of things: a rope swing hangs over the creek about ten to fifteen minutes above the junction, and the waterfall is roughly thirty minutes beyond the swing. That lets a group make one call at the swing instead of guessing back at the trailhead. Lower down, the south branch reaches a cascade within a few minutes of the car, so there is moving water on this trail almost immediately whether or not you push on to the falls.
Yes, and it matters when you are searching. The trail is also called the Centerville Canyon Trail, and the north fork in particular carries that name, so two accounts that sound like different hikes are often the same one. The spelling is the second trap: it is Deuel, three vowels in a row. The Osmyn and Emily Deuel House at 271 South 200 East is listed on the National Register under that spelling. There is no Duel Creek in Centerville.
Enough that staying dry is a feature of the trail rather than an accident. The trail crosses the creek on log bridges many times its whole length, with something like a dozen on the south branch alone. No official count is posted, so treat the number as a shape, not a figure. The bridges exist because the trail stays right beside the water instead of climbing away from it, which is also why the creek is filterable the whole way up.
Most of the year, with two cautions rather than a season. The canyon bottom sits around 4,627 feet, low enough that the trail generally goes whenever there is not much snow down, so the limiting factor is ice on the log crossings after a storm, not a closed month. Spring runoff is when the creek runs highest and the bridges are least fun. Late summer and fall give the easiest crossings and the best shade on the south branch.
Yes, on a leash. No Davis County canyon carries the watershed animal ban that closes some Salt Lake County canyons to dogs, and the county rule is simply that dogs are welcome on most trails but must stay leashed. The full county by county detail lives on the Davis canyons page rather than being repeated on each city's trail page.
The last half mile toward the south trailhead is rough dirt, and a low clearance car is better parked earlier and walked in. There is also a steep, loose section right at the south trailhead entrance. Neither lot is paved, and both fill on summer weekends and on warm weekday evenings, so an early start helps on a busy day.
No. There is no restroom, no drinking tap and no trash collection at any of the three trailheads, and no fee, permit or gate either. Centerville runs restrooms and water at its parks from mid-April through mid-October, but that is at the parks, not up the canyon. Carry water in and your trash out, and remember that filterable is not the same as drinkable; the creek needs filtering before you rely on it.
A canyon at the end of the street changes what an address is for
The difference between driving to a trailhead and walking to one is the difference between an outing and an ordinary evening, and on the top streets of Centerville that difference is about fifteen minutes on foot. It also comes attached to a specific set of questions: which side of the July fireworks boundary a parcel falls on, what the debris basin at the mouth of the canyon above it was sized for, and which of the town's two secondary irrigation systems reaches the garden. Those are parcel level answers rather than city level ones. Tell me what you are weighing and I will put you with a Davis County partner agent who works this bench, and stay on the file for the financing side.
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