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The canyon Huntington

The scenic byway that climbs Huntington Canyon, paved all the way

The Energy Loop, the drive that climbs out of Huntington

The Energy Loop is the paved south branch of the Huntington and Eccles Canyons National Scenic Byway, and SR-31 carries it from the middle of Huntington over the Wasatch Plateau to Fairview on US-89. The road climbs from 5,790 feet to over 9,600, and the stops come in the order it gives them: a coal plant at the canyon mouth, a memorial to the miners and rescuers, five miles of fly only water, Electric Lake, and the reservoir that produced a Columbian mammoth in 1988.

Scott BuehlerBy Scott Buehler, Moving Utah Updated October 2026

The short answer

The Energy Loop is the scenic drive that climbs out of Huntington Canyon. It is the south branch of the Huntington and Eccles Canyons National Scenic Byway, and SR-31 carries it west from Main Street for roughly 47.7 paved miles over the Wasatch Plateau to Fairview on US-89, topping out above 9,600 feet. There is no fee and no gate, and no fuel, shop or reliable phone signal on any of it, so everything for the day comes out of town before you turn west.

The stops come in the order the road gives them. A coal plant sits at the canyon mouth, a memorial to the miners and rescuers stands at the Crandall Canyon junction, the upper creek runs as fly only water, Electric Lake spreads below the summit, and Huntington Reservoir at the top is where a backhoe operator struck a Columbian mammoth in 1988. Half a day is a fair budget for the whole drive; the sections below take each stop as the road reaches it.

The routeSR-31, the south branch of the Energy Loop scenic byway
LengthRoughly 47.7 miles from Huntington to Fairview on US-89
The climbFrom 5,790 feet on Main Street to over 9,600 feet
SurfacePaved the whole way, no fee and no gate
ServicesNone until Fairview; fuel, food and phone signal stop in town

The Energy Loop at a glance

47.7 mi

of SR-31 from Huntington to Fairview

9,600 ft

and change at the top of the climb

29.9 mi

to the reservoir the mammoth came out of

5 mi

of fly only water below Electric Lake

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The byway

A National Scenic Byway that starts on Huntington's Main Street

The Energy Loop is the local name for the Huntington and Eccles Canyons National Scenic Byway. What follows is the whole route in context, then each stop in the order the road reaches it from the Huntington end.

The full byway, designated on 15 June 2000, runs about 83 miles across three state routes. SR-31 is the south branch, roughly 47.7 miles from Huntington over the Wasatch Plateau to Fairview on US-89. SR-264 for roughly 15.4 miles and SR-96 for roughly 19.8 make the northern branch across toward Scofield and US-6. Every mile of the south branch is paved, which surprises people who have only looked at the elevation profile.

The name is not decoration. The route was built and is maintained around coal and power, and the drive shows that before anything else: a plant at the canyon mouth, mine roads, and a memorial to the miners and rescuers the town lost in 2007. Then it turns to aspen, spruce, meadow and cold water, and by the top it is one of the better mountain drives in the state. Both halves are the same road and both belong in an honest description of it.

What makes it unusual for a small town is that it is a through road rather than a dead end. Huntington households use it as the summer shortcut to the Sanpete Valley, and the town sits at a point where the road connects two very different parts of Utah depending on which way you turn out of the driveway.

The honest winter answer

Open all winter, and closable for days at a time

This is the question everybody asks about SR-31 and the answer has two halves that both need saying. Skipping the second half is how people end up on a 9,600 foot pass in the wrong conditions.

The first half of the answer: as of September 2026, SR-31 is maintained and plowed through the winter, and it is not one of Utah's seasonally gated mountain roads. It does not sit on the list with Guardsman Pass, the Mirror Lake Highway, the Alpine Loop, Wolf Creek Pass, Monte Cristo and Big Mountain, all of which are locked from autumn until late spring. Look at a map in January and SR-31 is a road you can reasonably expect to drive.

The second half: it is a mountain pass over 9,600 feet with avalanche paths crossing it, and being maintained is not the same as being reliable. On 12 March 2023 UDOT closed it from milepost 33 near the Crandall Canyon junction up to milepost 18 after a run of avalanches came down, and it stayed shut until 16 March. Four days, on a route that households use as a shortcut, is the honest measure of what winter can do here.

For a visitor the practical version is to check UDOT current conditions before any winter crossing and to hold the long way round in mind. For a buyer the version is different and more useful: the valley floor gets about 17 inches of snow in a typical year while the plateau above it gets feet, so the town rarely has a snow problem and the road above it sometimes does.

SeasonWhat the road is doingWhat to check first
Late springOpen and clear, runoff coloring the creek, side roads still wetWhether the forest side roads have opened for the year
SummerThe main season, with afternoon storms building over the plateauThe forecast for the top, not for the valley
AutumnAspen color on the upper half, short window, busy weekendsWhere the color currently is, with the ranger district
WinterPlowed and open, with avalanche closures possible for daysUDOT current conditions before you leave town

The consistent mistake is reading a Castle Valley forecast as a plateau forecast. There is close to four thousand feet between the two, and in this canyon that gap is the whole story in every season.

Two fire closures shared headlines in 2026, and only one touched this district. The Black Canyon Fire closure, order 04-10-26-02-02 on the Ferron Ranger District of the Manti-La Sal National Forest, shut Potters Pond Campground and parts of Skyline Drive (Forest Road 0150) and the Millers Flat road (Forest Road 0014) from 3 to 31 August 2026. That period has now passed. The Babylon Fire closure in the news is a different district entirely, on the Monticello Ranger District in the Abajo Mountains south of here, and it never affected Huntington Canyon. Closures reappear each fire season, so ring the Ferron Ranger District on 435-636-3580 for what is in force before you rely on any forest road.

The power plant at the canyon mouth

First few miles of SR-31 No public access Year round Directions

It is the first thing you pass and there is no point pretending otherwise. Within a few minutes of turning west off Main Street the road runs by the Huntington power plant: two coal fired units with a combined nameplate of roughly 1,037 megawatts, the second unit in service since July 1974 and the first since June 1977, owned by PacifiCorp. Stacks, a switchyard, a coal yard and a great deal of steel, at the exact point where the canyon walls start to close in.

It is not a visitor attraction and there is no public access. It matters on this drive because it is the reason the byway is called the Energy Loop, because it explains a lot about this valley town of about 1,990 people and what has paid for it, and because a visitor who has not been told about it spends the first ten minutes of a scenic drive wondering what went wrong.

What it is for, in one paragraph

As of September 2026 the plant burns coal mined in this county and sends electricity out on the grid under a regulated utility, and it remains the largest employer and the largest taxpayer in Castle Valley, with the mines that supply it carrying hundreds of jobs on top of that. Everything you drive past higher up the canyon, including the forest campgrounds and the byway signage, sits in a county whose budget this plant is a substantial part of.

Where the plant stands now

The owner sets the plant's future in published utility resource plans, and those plans have carried more than one expected end date over the years, each one revised. That makes the current plan the source to read rather than local talk. For anyone whose interest in this town is financial rather than scenic, the honest starting point is that plan, and the Emery County address guide sets out how a buyer would weigh it.

The details

Where Huntington power plant, at the mouth of Huntington Canyon on SR-31
From downtown Huntington A few minutes west of the SR-10 junction
Season Visible from the highway all year
Cost Nothing; it is a roadside fact rather than a stop
Time needed The length of time it takes to drive past it

Getting there

Turn west off SR-10 in the middle of Huntington and stay on SR-31. The plant is on your right as the valley narrows into the canyon proper.

Before you go

  • There is no public access, no tour and no viewing area. Do not stop on the highway shoulder.
  • Coal and maintenance traffic uses this stretch of SR-31. Expect trucks on a two lane road.
  • The lights are visible from the valley at night. That is ordinary, not an incident.
  • Photography from the public road is fine. Drone flying around industrial sites is not.
  • Fuel up in town before this point. There is nothing beyond it until Fairview.

The Crandall Canyon junction and the Heroes Among Us memorial

The canyon road out of town Free Year round Directions

On the road out of Huntington toward the mine stands a curved wall carrying bronze relief portraits. It is called Heroes Among Us, it was sculpted by Karen Jobe Templeton and cast in Lehi, and it was unveiled on 14 September 2008. It remembers the miners and rescuers lost in the disaster.

On 6 August 2007 a collapse at the Crandall Canyon mine trapped miners underground. Ten days later, during the rescue effort, a second collapse took the lives of rescuers who had gone in after them. The memorial stands within sight of the middle school where families waited through those two weeks. This is living memory in Huntington rather than distant history, and a great many people in this town knew somebody on that wall.

How to be there

Visitors are welcome. The memorial is public and it was built to be visited. What it asks is the register you would bring to any memorial: quiet, unhurried, no posing, and a willingness to read the names rather than photograph the wall and drive on. If somebody local is there when you arrive, give them the space. That is the whole etiquette and it is not complicated.

The mine itself is not open and the road is not a tour

Crandall Canyon is not a visitor site. The mine was sealed and the ground around it is not somewhere to go looking. What is publicly appropriate is the memorial on the highway. If you want the fuller record of what happened and what the federal investigations found afterwards, that is a matter of public documents rather than a canyon drive, and the reading is worth doing before you form a view.

The details

Where Heroes Among Us memorial, on the canyon road out of Huntington
From downtown Huntington Minutes; it is at the town end of SR-31
Season Year round, whenever the road is open
Cost Free
Time needed Ten minutes, longer if you read them all

Getting there

West out of Huntington on SR-31, before the road begins to climb in earnest. The memorial is signed and sits within sight of the middle school.

Before you go

  • This is a place of mourning for this town. Behave the way you would at any memorial.
  • The mine site itself is closed. Do not go looking for it.
  • Parking is limited. Do not block the highway shoulder.
  • Read the names on the wall.
  • Winter weather reaches this point of the canyon. Check conditions before a cold day trip.

The artificial fly only stretch of Huntington Creek

Below Electric Lake Utah fishing license June to October Directions

The creek runs beside SR-31 for much of the climb, and the upper stretch of it is the reason people who fish know Huntington's name at all. From Electric Lake down to the Engineers and Flood canyon confluences, roughly five miles, the water is managed as artificial fly only with a two fish limit. That regime, on water that small, is what produces the fishing.

The trout are wild brown, tiger and cutthroat, mostly ten to sixteen inches, and the creek is narrow enough to read from a pull off. Below Engineers Canyon the general statewide rules apply, the pressure changes and so does the character of the water. Both stretches are worth fishing; only one of them is the blue ribbon stretch, and knowing which side of the line you are standing on is your responsibility rather than a sign's.

Read the current rule, not last year's

Utah publishes its fishing regulations water by water and revises them annually, and special regulation stretches are exactly the ones that get adjusted. Boundaries, limits and tackle rules on upper Huntington Creek should be read at source for the current year before you fish, not taken from a page like this one or from somebody's memory of a good day in a previous season.

This is a small creek in a steep canyon

Spring melt off the Wasatch Plateau runs this water hard and colors it, which is why the season effectively opens in June rather than in April. The other end of that is the monsoon: a July or August thunderstorm over the plateau reaches a creek like this quickly, and small water in a steep canyon rises and browns faster than most anglers expect. Watch the sky upstream rather than overhead.

The details

Where Upper Huntington Creek, SR-31, Electric Lake down to Engineers Canyon
From downtown Huntington Fifteen to twenty five minutes up the canyon
Season June through October; runoff clouds it in spring
Cost A current Utah fishing license
Time needed An evening, or a day to work the whole stretch

Getting there

West on SR-31 from Huntington. The creek follows the road up the canyon and the special regulation water is the upper five miles of it, immediately below the Electric Lake dam.

Before you go

  • Artificial flies only and a two fish limit on the upper stretch. Confirm the current rule at source.
  • The regulation boundary is a place on the creek, not a fence. Know where you are.
  • Coverage is patchy to absent up here. Tell somebody your plan before you leave town.
  • Storms over the plateau reach this creek fast in July and August.
  • Park in the pull offs rather than on the highway. This road carries trucks.

Electric Lake, at the top of the climb

Upper SR-31 Free to look, license to fish Late spring to autumn Directions

Electric Lake sits high on the SR-31 climb, a mountain reservoir named for exactly what it was built to serve, and it is the point at which the drive stops feeling like a canyon and starts feeling like a plateau. Aspen and spruce, meadow, and a body of cold water at an elevation where the summer never really gets going.

It is also the top of the artificial fly only water: everything below the dam down to Engineers Canyon is the special regulation stretch. The lake itself fishes, and the road past it carries on climbing toward the summit and the junction with SR-264 that makes the northern branch of the byway. This is where most people stop for a photograph and where the temperature difference from the valley floor becomes obvious.

The elevation gap is bigger than the map suggests

Huntington sits at about 5,790 feet. The top of this road is over 9,600. That is close to four thousand feet of climb in under thirty miles, and the practical version is that a July afternoon in the valley that is genuinely hot becomes a cool one at the lake, and an October morning that is crisp in town is freezing up here. Take a layer you were not planning to need.

Current lake and access rules come from the agencies

Water levels at a working reservoir move with the year and with what the system needs, and boating, camping and fishing rules on and around it are set by the managing bodies rather than by tradition. The Ferron Ranger District on 435-636-3580 covers the forest ground here and the state publishes the fishing rules. Ask them for the season you are actually traveling in.

The details

Where Electric Lake, upper SR-31, Manti-La Sal National Forest
From downtown Huntington Roughly half an hour up the canyon from Huntington
Season Late spring to autumn for comfort; the road stays open in winter
Cost Free to stop; a Utah license to fish
Time needed Half an hour to stop, a day to fish it

Getting there

Continue west and up SR-31 past the fly only water. The lake is visible from the highway near the top of the climb, with pull offs along it.

Before you go

  • It is four thousand feet above town. Dress for the elevation you are driving to.
  • Water levels at a working reservoir move through the year. Do not plan a boat around a photograph.
  • Weather changes fast on a plateau at this height, including in August.
  • There is no fuel, shop or service anywhere up here. Everything comes from the valley.
  • Check current forest closures on 435-636-3580 before relying on any side road.

Huntington Reservoir, where the mammoth came out in 1988

29.9 miles up SR-31 Free, day use only Summer and early autumn Directions

At the top of the canyon, by the Forest Service's own directions 29.9 miles west of Huntington, sits a small cold reservoir at roughly 9,000 feet. It is day use only, no overnight camping, motors under ten horsepower, vault toilets and no drinking water, and it fishes for cutthroat and tiger trout. On an ordinary day it is a quiet piece of water that almost nobody stops at.

On 8 August 1988 a backhoe operator working on the dam struck bone. What came out of the mud that summer was about ninety percent of the skeleton of a bull Columbian mammoth, preserved by ground that had sat near freezing for thousands of years. It was the highest elevation mammoth skeleton then known in North America, which is the part that made it scientifically remarkable rather than merely large.

The site is here and the skeleton is not

The bones are kept in climate controlled storage by the Utah State University Eastern Prehistoric Museum in Price, twenty one miles north of Huntington, and that is where the display and the interpretation live. What Huntington has is the place they came out of, at the top of the canyon road. To see the animal rather than stand where it was found, that is a trip to Price, and the Price city guide is the starting point.

Why finding it up here mattered

Columbian mammoths were animals of plains and open country, so a nearly complete one at nine thousand feet on a mountain plateau was not where the textbooks said to look. That is why the find is still cited. It also sits in a wider argument about what the last mammoths in North America were doing and when they stopped doing it, a live scientific question rather than a settled story.

The details

Where Huntington Reservoir, top of SR-31, Manti-La Sal National Forest
From downtown Huntington 29.9 miles west by the Forest Service's own figure
Season Summer and early autumn; the site is snowbound for much of the year
Cost Free; a Utah license to fish
Time needed An hour to stop, longer to fish

Getting there

West out of Huntington on SR-31 and keep climbing past Electric Lake to the signed reservoir and its parking near the top of the road.

Before you go

  • Day use only. No overnight camping at the reservoir.
  • Motors are limited to under ten horsepower on this water.
  • Vault toilets and no potable water. Carry your own.
  • This is not the reservoir at the state park in town. That one is Huntington North.
  • At 9,000 feet the season is short and the weather is its own. Check before you drive up.
Scott Buehler

Scott Buehler

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Quick answers

The canyon, answered

It is the Huntington and Eccles Canyons National Scenic Byway, designated on 15 June 2000 and about 83 miles across three state routes. SR-31 is the south branch, roughly 47.7 miles from Huntington west over the Wasatch Plateau to Fairview on US-89, topping out above 9,600 feet. SR-264 for about 15.4 miles and SR-96 for about 19.8 make the northern branch toward Scofield and US-6. The name comes from the coal and power infrastructure the route was built around.

Yes. As of September 2026 the road is maintained and plowed year round, and it is not one of Utah's seasonally gated mountain roads the way Guardsman Pass, the Mirror Lake Highway, the Alpine Loop and Wolf Creek Pass are. That is not the same as reliable. SR-31 crosses a pass over 9,600 feet with avalanche paths on it, and on 12 March 2023 UDOT closed it from milepost 33 near the Crandall Canyon junction up to milepost 18 after a run of avalanches, reopening it on 16 March. Check UDOT current conditions before any winter crossing.

At Huntington Reservoir, the small cold water near the top of SR-31 at roughly 9,000 feet, which the Forest Service puts 29.9 miles west of Huntington. On 8 August 1988 a backhoe operator working on the dam struck bone, and about ninety percent of the skeleton of a bull Columbian mammoth came out of the mud that summer. It was the highest elevation mammoth skeleton then known in North America. Do not confuse it with Huntington North Reservoir at the state park on the edge of town.

The remains are kept in climate controlled storage by the Utah State University Eastern Prehistoric Museum in Price, about 21 miles north of Huntington. What Huntington has is the place it came out of, at the top of the canyon road. To see the animal rather than stand where it was found, that is a trip to Price rather than a drive up SR-31, and the museum is the right place to ask what is currently on display.

The stretch from Electric Lake down to the Engineers and Flood canyon confluences, roughly five miles, is managed as artificial fly only with a two fish limit and holds wild brown, tiger and cutthroat trout, mostly ten to sixteen inches. Below Engineers Canyon the general statewide rules apply. Utah publishes its fishing regulations water by water and revises them each year, so read the current rule for this creek at the source before you fish it.

No. There is no public access, no tour and no viewing area. It sits at the mouth of the canyon a few minutes west of the SR-10 junction in Huntington: two coal fired units with a combined nameplate of roughly 1,037 megawatts, the second in service since July 1974 and the first since June 1977, owned by PacifiCorp. It matters on this drive because the byway runs straight past it and because, as of September 2026, it remains the largest employer and the largest taxpayer in Castle Valley.

A curved wall carrying bronze relief portraits on the road out of Huntington toward the mine, sculpted by Karen Jobe Templeton, cast in Lehi and unveiled on 14 September 2008. It remembers the miners and rescuers lost after the two collapses at the Crandall Canyon mine in August 2007. It stands within sight of the middle school where families waited. Visitors are welcome and the right register there is quiet.

About an hour each way for the roughly 47.7 miles, longer with stops, and half a day is a fair budget for the drive with the fishing water, Electric Lake and the reservoir at the top included. It is paved the whole way. There is no fuel, shop, cafe or reliable phone signal between the two towns, so everything for the trip comes out of Huntington before you turn west.

The Black Canyon Fire closure, order 04-10-26-02-02, shut Potters Pond Campground and parts of Skyline Drive (Forest Road 0150) and the Millers Flat road (Forest Road 0014) on the Ferron Ranger District from 3 to 31 August 2026. That period is over. The Babylon Fire closure you may have read about is a different district entirely, on the Monticello Ranger District in the Abajo Mountains south of here, and it never affected Huntington Canyon. Forest closures come and go with the fire season, so ring the Ferron Ranger District on 435-636-3580 for what is currently in force.

Scott Buehler, Moving Utah

A byway out the front door and a power plant in the first four minutes

Both of those are Huntington, and a buyer should be comfortable with the pair of them rather than only the pretty one. If you are weighing an address in this valley, the questions that settle it are the water shares, the drive to Price, and how much of the local economy rests on the plant at the canyon mouth. Tell me what you are looking at and I will get an Emery County partner agent on it.

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