By Scott Buehler, Moving UtahThe Butler Wash Ruins interpretive trail
UT-95 near milepost 111 · Free · Year round · Directions
This is the one everybody should do, and the reason is that it costs nothing and asks nothing. A BLM sign on the north side of UT-95, about 10.5 miles west of the US-191 junction and roughly 14 miles from Blanding, points into a parking lot with a vault toilet. From it a marked route runs about a mile round trip over open slickrock to a railed overlook, and across the wash in an alcove there is a set of rooms built more than seven hundred years ago.
The distance across the wash is the point. You are close enough to read the masonry, the doorways and the way the alcove was used, and far enough that nothing you do can damage any of it. As an introduction to what this country holds, it is better than a photograph and better than a permit hike you are not ready for.
Follow the cairns, not a path
There is no built trail for most of the way. The route crosses bare sandstone and pockets of sand and it is marked with cairns, which is straightforward in daylight if you keep looking up and easy to lose if you get absorbed in the ground. Ordinary trainers are fine. There is no shade whatsoever between the parking lot and the rail, and no water at either end, which in July is the whole difficulty of a one mile walk.
The rail protects the rest of the wash
The alcove you are looking at is one of a very large number along this wash, and it is the one that has been developed for visitors precisely so that the rest can be left alone. Treat that as the deal. The published, signed, developed sites are the ones to visit; the unmarked ones are not a scavenger hunt, and the agencies do not publish directions to them for good reasons that have to do with damage rather than secrecy.
The details
Getting there
South from Blanding on US-191 for four miles, then west on UT-95 about 10.5 miles. The signed turn is near milepost 111 on the north side, with a graded parking lot and a vault toilet.
Before you go
- No water at the trailhead and no shade on the route. Carry more than a mile suggests.
- The overlook is the destination. Do not descend to the alcove or cross to the structure.
- Cairns mark the way over slickrock. Look up regularly rather than following footprints.
- Summer storms build fast. Slickrock and lightning are a poor combination.
- Confirm current access with the BLM Monticello Field Office if you are traveling far.
Drive the UT-95 cut through the reef
A few miles west of Butler Wash · Free · Year round · Directions
Two or three miles past the Butler Wash turn, UT-95 stops going around things and goes through one. The highway cuts straight across Comb Ridge in a notch blasted through the sandstone, drops into Comb Wash on the far side, and climbs again onto Cedar Mesa. It takes about ninety seconds to drive and it is the most dramatic ninety seconds on the road.
Pull over on the west side and look back. From the wash the reef stands as a continuous wall running north and south as far as you can see in both directions, and the notch you just came through looks like what it is: a deliberate hole cut in an obstacle that had stopped everybody for a very long time.
What a monocline actually is
Comb Ridge is not a mountain range or a fault scarp. It is a monocline, a single fold in otherwise flat lying rock where the layers bend down steeply on one side and then flatten out again. That bend, worked on by erosion, leaves the harder sandstone standing as a tilted wall. It runs roughly eighty miles from near the Abajo Mountains south into Arizona at Kayenta, and on this side it stands more than seven hundred feet above Butler Wash.
The Navajo name, and the nations behind it
The Navajo name for Comb Ridge is Tse K'aan, usually rendered as rocks standing up, and the reef carries meaning in Navajo tradition rather than standing as scenery with a translation attached. The Hopi Tribe, the Navajo Nation, the Ute Indian Tribe of the Uintah and Ouray Reservation, the Ute Mountain Ute Tribe and the Pueblo of Zuni have been the five nations of Bears Ears since the monument was created, and they filed the first suit over the July 2026 reduction within hours. The name belongs in the same paragraph as that fight, not in a footnote to it.
The details
Getting there
Continue west on UT-95 past the Butler Wash turn. The cut is obvious when you reach it, and there are pullouts on both sides where it is safe to stop off the road.
Before you go
- Stop in a pullout rather than on the shoulder. This is a highway with trucks on it.
- The best view of the reef is from the west side looking back east.
- Sunrise and late afternoon light are what make the wall read. Midday flattens it.
- There is no fuel, no water and no shop anywhere along here.
- In winter the notch can hold ice when the rest of the road is dry.
Take the Butler Wash Road along the east foot of the reef
County Road 230 · Free · Dry weather only · Directions
Butler Wash Road, County Road 230, is the graded track that runs north and south along the eastern foot of Comb Ridge, from UT-163 in the south up to UT-95 just south of Blanding. Comb Wash Road, County Road 235, does the same job on the western side. Between them they are how the reef is reached by anybody not on the highway.
This is where the honest warning belongs. In dry conditions these are ordinary graded dirt roads and a passenger car with ordinary tires can travel them slowly and carefully. Wet, the clay in them turns to a grease that stops four wheel drive, and rain thirty miles away can do it. There is no signal, almost no traffic, and no recovery service.
What a passenger car can and cannot do here
Can: the main graded length of Butler Wash Road and Comb Wash Road in dry weather, driven slowly, with attention to washboard and the occasional wash crossing. Cannot: any of it after rain or in a thaw, the spur tracks off it, or anything sandy. If it has rained in the last day, or the sky in any direction looks like it will, the correct decision is the pavement. People get this wrong every season and the recovery bill from out here is not small.
Why the signed sites are the ones to plan around
The canyons cutting back into Comb Ridge from Butler Wash hold a great many archaeological sites, and the agencies do not publish route descriptions to the unmarked ones. That is not coyness: concentrated visitation is the mechanism by which these places are damaged, and the developed sites exist to absorb it. Drive the road, look at the reef, walk the signed trails, and treat everything else as somebody else's business.
The details
Getting there
The road leaves UT-95 near the Butler Wash area and runs south along the foot of the reef toward UT-163. Comb Wash Road, County Road 235, runs the parallel line on the west side.
Before you go
- Graded dirt and clay. After rain it is a grease that stops four wheel drive.
- No signal, no traffic and no recovery service. Tell somebody where you are going.
- Carry water, a spare and the means to change it. Washboard is hard on tires.
- Cattle and open range are normal along here. Gates left as found.
- Check current road conditions with San Juan County or the BLM before committing.
Stop at the Mule Canyon interpretive site on UT-95
UT-95 west of Comb Ridge · Free to view · Year round · Directions
Further west along UT-95, past the reef and up on the mesa, there is a second developed roadside stop: a stabilised kiva and tower complex with interpretive signage, parking and a short walk from the car to the structures. Like Butler Wash it is signed from the highway, it is free to look at, and it exists so that people driving this road have somewhere legitimate to stop.
It is also a useful marker of where you are. Beyond this point the country either side of the highway is Cedar Mesa, the canyons cut deeper, and the rules change: Mule Canyon itself is one of the named canyons inside the day use fee area, so walking into it is a different proposition from stopping at a roadside site above it.
The line between a roadside stop and a permit hike
Developed interpretive sites on the highway are free and need nothing. The canyons themselves are a fee area with a permit system: a few dollars per person per day, with a weekly and an annual option per vehicle, and Mule Canyon is on the named list along with Grand Gulch, Lime, Road, Fish, Owl and Slickhorn. Anybody who intends to walk down into the canyon rather than look at the roadside site should sort that first, and the Cedar Mesa page has the full system.
Stabilised does not mean sturdy
Stabilisation is conservation work that holds original masonry together. It does not turn a seven or eight hundred year old wall into a modern one, and every hand on it undoes some of that work. The same applies at every developed site out here. Read the signs, keep to the marked area, and treat a stabilised structure as more fragile than it looks rather than less, because the reason it is still standing is a great deal of careful and expensive effort.
The details
Getting there
Continue west on UT-95 past the Comb Ridge cut and up onto the mesa. The site is signed from the highway with parking beside it and a short level walk to the structures.
Before you go
- Confirm current access and any closure with the BLM Monticello Field Office before relying on it.
- Stay on the marked area and off the masonry, which is stabilised rather than rebuilt.
- Walking into Mule Canyon itself needs a Cedar Mesa day use permit. The roadside site does not.
- There is no water and no shade at the stop.
- The mesa here sits above 6,000 feet. Weather is not desert floor weather.
The lines on the map
This ground stayed in. Most of what is beyond it did not
Comb Ridge has been inside and outside a national monument four times in ten years. Here is the record, with dates, and where to get the current version.
Bears Ears National Monument was established on 28 December 2016 at about 1.35 million acres. A proclamation on 4 December 2017 cut it to two units. A further proclamation on 8 October 2021 restored it and set it at about 1.36 million acres, and the Department of the Interior signed the record of decision on the approved resource management plan for that version on 13 January 2025.
On 13 July 2026 another proclamation reduced the monument to about 121,096 acres in two units: the Shash Jaa Unit at about 106,816 acres and the Indian Creek Unit at about 14,279 acres. It takes effect on 11 September 2026. Comb Ridge, Arch Canyon, Mule Canyon and part of the Butler Wash Archaeological District sit inside the reduced Shash Jaa Unit; nearly all of Cedar Mesa, including Grand Gulch, falls outside it. The proclamation also disbands the Bears Ears Commission.
The five nations of that commission, the Hopi Tribe, the Navajo Nation, the Ute Indian Tribe of the Uintah and Ouray Reservation, the Ute Mountain Ute Tribe and the Pueblo of Zuni, filed litigation over the reduction. The argument is about whether the Antiquities Act permits a president to reduce a monument at all, and that is a question for the courts.
What has not changed, whatever the map says. Federal law protecting archaeological resources applies to these sites whether or not a monument boundary runs over them. Removing or disturbing artifacts, damaging structures and defacing rock art on public land are offenses under the Archaeological Resources Protection Act regardless of designation. Bears Ears is administered jointly by the Bureau of Land Management, through its Monticello Field Office, and by the U.S. Forest Service on the Manti-La Sal National Forest, and those two agencies publish the only boundary map and the only access rules worth planning around. Check them rather than any map you were handed.
Choosing
Four stops, and how to pick between them
All four are on or just off the same fourteen to twenty-two miles of highway, and they ask very different things of a visitor and a vehicle.
| Stop | Distance from Blanding | Vehicle | Effort |
|---|---|---|---|
| Butler Wash Ruins trail | About 14 miles | Any vehicle, paved to the parking lot | A mile round trip over slickrock, no shade |
| The UT-95 cut | About 17 miles | Any vehicle, paved pullouts | Getting out of the car |
| Butler Wash Road | Meets UT-95 at about 14 miles | Passenger car in dry weather only | Slow driving, an hour or several |
| Mule Canyon roadside site | About 22 miles | Any vehicle, paved to the parking lot | A few minutes on the level |
Anybody with one hour and one car should do the Butler Wash trail. Anybody with a day and dry weather can add the county road. Nothing on this list requires a permit; the canyons behind them do.
Where the rest of this country is covered
- Route descriptions to unmarked ruins along the reef are not published anywhere, because concentrated visitation is how these places get damaged.
- The Cedar Mesa permit system in full, the fee area with its ranger station, its season and its cap, is covered on the Cedar Mesa page.
- Natural Bridges, a further eighteen miles west on the same highway, carries its own entrance fee, its own loop road and its own page.
- Indian Creek, Newspaper Rock, the Needles and the Abajos are the northern approach to this same monument and are best run from Monticello, 21 miles up US-191.
- The museum in Blanding that makes all of this legible, Edge of the Cedars, is the right thing to do before driving out here rather than after.