Madsen Bay, the campground for a big rig
Northern shoreline · State park fees · Open water season
Madsen Bay sits on the northern shoreline of Scofield Reservoir and it is the one that has been renovated. Paved sites with electric and water make it the practical choice for larger trailers and motorhomes, which matters more here than it would at a lower elevation, because a mountain reservoir campground at 7,618 feet is not somewhere you want to be improvising hook-ups.
The bay itself is the shallower, gentler end of the water, which is why the boat access and the family use concentrate here. In a reservoir of roughly 2,815 acres that is a meaningful distinction: the north end and the dam end behave differently in wind, and the wind at this elevation on open water is the thing that ends a day rather than the temperature.
Book it, and confirm the season before you tow anything
This is a Utah State Parks campground and the reservation system is the state's. What changes year to year is when the season opens and closes and whether sites are walk-in only for part of it, because at this elevation the calendar is set by snow rather than by policy. Ring the park before you tow a trailer up a mountain road on the strength of a website you read in February.
Summer and winter are different parks
Park hours run roughly 7:00 to 22:00 in summer and 8:00 to 17:00 in winter, which is a fair signal of how differently the place operates across the year. In the open water season this is a boating and camping reservoir. From the freeze it becomes an ice fishery with snowmobiling and cross country skiing around it, and the campground role changes completely.
The details
Getting there
Northwest on US-6 from Price, then UT-96 toward Scofield. The campground is signed on the northern shore of the reservoir.
Before you go
- Confirm the current season, hours and reservation rules with Utah State Parks before towing.
- At 7,618 feet, nights are cold in every month of the year. Pack for it.
- Wind on open water at this elevation is the usual reason a day ends early.
- A current Utah fishing licence is required to fish, with species limits set for this water.
- Check for any water level, algae or fire restriction advisory before you go.
Mountain View, the campground by the dam
Near the dam · State park fees · Open water season
The other state park campground sits near the dam with views out across the water, and it suits smaller trailers and tents rather than large rigs. That is not a lesser option, it is a different one: this is the end of the reservoir with the structure and the deeper water, and it is closer to the shoreline fishing that people drive up from Price for after work.
The dam itself is worth two minutes of attention. Scofield Dam is an earthfill structure 125 feet high with a crest 575 feet long, completed on 15 June 1946, holding a total of 73,600 acre feet with 65,800 of that active. Annual inflow runs around 52,000 acre feet. Those numbers are the water budget for a large part of Carbon County, which is the next section of this page.
Fish from the shore or from a boat
Cutthroat, rainbow and tiger trout are the species Utah State Parks names, and all three can be taken from the bank as well as from a boat, which is unusual enough to be worth saying. A reservoir where shore fishing genuinely works is a reservoir a family can use without a trailer, and that is a large part of why this water carries the traffic it does from a town forty minutes away.
The elevation is the thing people underestimate
Price sits at roughly 5,600 feet. This water sits at roughly 7,618. That is two thousand feet of climb in a thirty five minute drive, and it shows up as a genuinely different climate rather than a slightly cooler one. Take a layer in July, expect the season to be short at both ends, and treat a forecast for Price as no evidence at all about conditions at the dam.
The details
Getting there
Northwest on US-6 then UT-96. The campground is signed near the dam end of the reservoir, and it suits tents and smaller trailers rather than large rigs.
Before you go
- Suited to tents and smaller trailers. Madsen Bay is the one with paved sites and hook-ups.
- Park hours are roughly 7:00 to 22:00 in summer and 8:00 to 17:00 in winter.
- Shore fishing works here, which not every reservoir can claim.
- Two thousand feet above Price. The weather is not the town's weather.
- Confirm fees and any advisory with Utah State Parks before you drive up.
Ice fishing, which is what it is famous for
The frozen reservoir · Licence required · Deep winter
Scofield in winter is one of the signature ice fisheries in this half of Utah, and the car park at the right weekend fills with people who drove up from three counties. Trout under ice on a big high reservoir is the whole point, the state park stays open through it, and snowmobiling and cross country skiing run around the same shoreline.
It is also the fishery that came back. Scofield lost its Blue Ribbon designation in 2017 after Utah chubs, illegally introduced in 2005, took the water over. The Division of Wildlife Resources rewrote the management plan and began stocking predators from late 2017, including tiger muskie, wiper and cutthroat, and the Blue Ribbon Fisheries Advisory Council voted the status back, reported in December 2024.
Never assume the ice, and never assume it uniformly
Ice thickness on a 2,815 acre reservoir varies across the water, across the season and around inlets and structure, and no published statement covers a specific spot on a specific day. Check locally, check on the day, and treat anybody else's tracks as information rather than as permission. This is the one item on this page where getting it wrong is not a matter of a wasted afternoon.
One illegal bucket cost a fishery seven years
The chub introduction in 2005 is the clearest illustration anywhere in Utah of what moving fish between waters actually does. It broke a Blue Ribbon fishery, it took a rewritten management plan and years of predator stocking to repair, and the designation only came back in late 2024. That is nineteen years from one bucket to a restored status, and it is why the rules about live fish and bait exist at all.
The details
Getting there
Northwest on US-6 then UT-96. In winter the drive up is a mountain road and the conditions on it decide the trip as much as the ice does.
Before you go
- Never assume ice is safe. Thickness varies across the water and across the day.
- Check current ice reports and the state park's own advisories before you drive up.
- A current Utah fishing licence is required, with species limits set for this water.
- Never move live fish or bait between waters. The chub introduction here is why.
- The road up from Price is a mountain road in winter. Check conditions first.
The Scofield cemetery and the 1900 memorial
Scofield town · Free · Snow free months
On 1 May 1900 a dust explosion tore through the Winter Quarters mine near Scofield. Ten twenty five pound kegs of black powder detonated in the Number 4 section and ignited the coal dust, which carried the blast and set off about twenty more kegs. The explosion destroyed the ventilation fan in Number 4 while the fan in the connected Number 1 kept running and drew afterdamp into it, and men walked into the gas trying to get out.
The official count is two hundred dead, with contemporary estimates as high as two hundred and forty six, and one body was not recovered until August. At that date it was the worst mining accident in American history. It left a hundred and seven widows and two hundred and sixty eight fatherless children. Seventy five caskets were brought from Denver and a hundred and twenty five from Salt Lake City, and about a hundred and fifty of the dead lie in the cemetery here.
The headstones are the record
Two large funerals were held on 5 May 1900 with a hundred and thirty five graves dug. Sixty one of the dead were Finnish Americans, and the Luoma family lost nine members, six sons and three grandsons, three months after arriving from Finland. Those are the facts as recorded, and the cemetery is where they are legible. It is a small hillside burial ground and it does not need any commentary added to it.
This is Price's mining history, told from the other end
The corridor north of Price carries its own mining and railroad heritage, its own museum and its own 1924 disaster, and that story belongs to Helper and is covered on the Helper city guide. What Scofield holds is the earlier and larger one, up on the plateau, at the head of the drainage that Price drinks from. Two disasters, two towns, twenty four years apart, in the same coalfield.
The details
Getting there
Northwest on US-6 then UT-96 past the reservoir into the town of Scofield. The cemetery is on the hillside above the townsite and the memorial stands in town.
Before you go
- It is an active burial ground and a place of mourning. Behave as you would anywhere else.
- Leave headstones and offerings untouched. Do not do rubbings.
- This is high country. Snow closes the practical season and the road can be poor.
- There are no services in Scofield to rely on. Everything comes from Price.
- The 1924 disaster in the corridor north of Price is a separate event in a separate town.
Scofield town, the smallest incorporated place in Utah
UT-96 above the reservoir · Free to drive through · Snow free months
Scofield is the smallest incorporated place in Utah by population. The 2010 census counted twenty four people. It sits on the plateau above the reservoir that took its name, it was a coal town of real size a hundred and twenty years ago, and what is left is a scatter of buildings, a cemetery on the hill and a town government running for a couple of dozen residents.
Driving through it is a genuinely useful twenty minutes for anybody trying to understand this county, because it is the clearest available picture of what the coalfield's whole arc looks like at the far end. The mine that killed two hundred men in 1900 was up the hill from here. The reservoir that supplies a city of eight thousand is down the road. Both of those are what this town is now.
Read it as history rather than as a place to poke around
Twenty four residents means every building either belongs to somebody or is a hazard, and often both. There is no museum, no visitor centre and nothing set up for a visitor. Stay on the public road, do not enter structures, and do not treat a town with a small population as an abandoned one. It is not, and the difference matters to the people who live there.
The season is decided for you
This is high plateau country and the practical visiting season is the snow free months. Summer and early autumn are straightforward. Deep winter here is a different proposition entirely, and the drive up from Price is a mountain road before you get anywhere near the town. Ice fishers make that trip and know the road; a casual visitor in January should think twice.
The details
Getting there
Northwest on US-6 from Price, then UT-96 past the reservoir. The town sits above the water and the cemetery is on the hillside.
Before you go
- It is an inhabited town with a small population, not an abandoned one. Treat it that way.
- Do not enter buildings. Stay on the public road.
- There are no shops, no fuel and no services. Everything comes from Price.
- The practical season is the snow free months. The drive is a mountain road.
- The cemetery above the town is where the 1900 dead are buried.
Why a buyer should care
The snowpack up here is the tap down there.
Most towns in eastern Utah drink from wells or from a river they can see. Price does not. Its culinary supply is Price River water stored behind a 1946 dam twenty two miles northwest and roughly two thousand feet up, treated at a culinary plant and blended with city spring water, with the Price River Water Improvement District holding Scofield shares and leased natural flow rights to meet demand across the valley.
The consequence is that the thing which decides a dry year in Price happens on the Wasatch Plateau rather than in the Castle Valley. Snowpack on this ground in February shows up in what the valley has to work with in August, and the storage figure on a state park page in midsummer is a genuinely useful indicator rather than a curiosity. On 7 August 2026 that figure was 51 percent.
None of that is alarming on its own and none of it should be read as a forecast. What it is, is a piece of the picture that no listing carries and most buyers never learn: the water arrangement here is a stored, shared, upstream one, and the sensible questions are about the district, the rate and the history at a specific address rather than about the river running past the town.
The February snowpack twenty two miles northwest is the August water bill in town.
