By Scott Buehler, Moving UtahLook at it properly from the valley floor
US-6 and US-191 pullouts · Free · Year round
The easiest honest way to see the Book Cliffs is to stop the car on the valley floor and look, which is what nearly everyone who visits Price ends up doing. The wall runs along the northern and eastern skyline, a continuous band of pale Cretaceous sandstone sitting on darker grey Mancos Shale, and it is at its most legible in the last two hours of daylight when the low sun picks out the vertical jointing.
The name is the geology. The sandstone caps that top the south facing buttes look like a row of books stood on end, which is what the early surveyors saw and what stuck. Once you have been told that, the whole skyline reorganises itself and you cannot un-see it, which is the best argument for reading a paragraph like this one before you drive rather than after.
The same rock is the reason the county exists
The coal seams that built Carbon County are in this sequence, mostly in the Blackhawk Formation and its equivalents, in beds that reach around twenty two feet thick. The Book Cliffs coal field covers about a thousand square miles across eastern Utah and western Colorado and runs roughly a hundred and seventy miles. So the wall on the skyline is not just scenery next to a coal town, it is the coal, exposed in cross section for two hundred miles.
Two hundred miles, and no single agreed ending
The escarpment runs roughly two hundred miles from the head of Price Canyon into Colorado, and it carries on from there as the same continuous wall of sandstone toward Grand Junction, which pushes the full run closer to two hundred and fifty miles. Different descriptions stop measuring at different places, so the round number you read depends on which end and which source. The wall itself does not change; only the endpoint does.
The details
Getting there
Any of the pullouts on US-6 and US-191 north and east of Price. The corridor toward Wellington and the corridor north toward the head of the canyon each give a different face of the same wall.
Before you go
- Stop at a pullout rather than on the shoulder. This corridor carries real truck traffic.
- The last two hours of daylight are when the escarpment does its work.
- Winter air is clearer than summer air here. The wall reads better in January.
- What looks like a road up the cliffs from a distance is usually a drainage or a mine bench.
- Take a long lens if you have one. The scale flattens badly in a phone photograph.
Drive through the wall instead of at it
Nine Mile Canyon · Free · Spring through autumn · Directions
The Book Cliffs are a barrier, which is why there are so few ways through them and why the ones that exist matter so much. Nine Mile Canyon is the natural cut, running from the valley floor northeast of Price up through the escarpment and out into the Uinta Basin, and that is why a freight route ran up it a century ago and why the rock art is there in the first place.
Taking that road is the single best way to understand the wall as a three dimensional thing rather than a backdrop. You go in at the bottom, climb through the section, and come out on the other side, and the rock changes around you the whole way. The Nine Mile page covers the drive, the sites and what the north end asks of a vehicle.
Very few routes cross this thing
Two hundred miles of escarpment with a handful of ways through it is the fact that shaped every road, rail line and settlement in this half of the state. The canyon northeast of Price is one. The head of the canyon north of town, where US-6 climbs out toward the Wasatch Plateau, is another. Almost everything else is either an unpaved industry road or nothing at all, which is why the map here looks so empty.
The far side is a different world
Come out of the north end and you are in the Uinta Basin, which has its own towns, its own economy and its own weather. That is worth holding onto because it explains why Price faces southwest toward Provo rather than north. The wall is not a scenic boundary, it is a functional one, and the nearest city in a straight line north is not the nearest city by road by a very long way.
The details
Getting there
East on US-6 and US-191 to Wellington, then north on Soldier Creek Road. The canyon climbs through the escarpment and the Gate Canyon connector at the far end continues into the Uinta Basin on dirt.
Before you go
- The main canyon road is paved. The connector at the north end is not.
- No fuel, water, shop or coverage in 46 miles. Everything comes from Price.
- Call the BLM Price Field Office on 435-636-3600 for conditions before you go.
- Stay on the road. Much of the canyon bottom is private ranch land.
- Do not touch any rock art panel. The damage from skin oils is permanent.
Know that there is a wild bison herd up there
The Book Cliffs roadless area · Public land · Not a drive-up viewing
A free ranging bison herd roams across the Book Cliffs, and they are a genuinely wild, publicly managed population rather than a fenced display herd. The reintroduction began in August 2008 with fourteen animals from the Ute Tribe's herd released onto Bureau of Land Management ground, followed in January 2009 by 31 from the Henry Mountains herd.
It has been a three way partnership from the start, between the Utah Division of Wildlife Resources, the Bureau of Land Management and the Ute Tribe Fish and Wildlife Department, and the tribe's role in it is current rather than historical. The herd is constrained by nothing except the terrain, across a range of well over a million acres of arroyo and butte country with almost no roads in it.
This is not a wildlife drive and you should not treat it as one
There is no viewing area, no loop road and no realistic chance of seeing bison from pavement. The country they range is roadless by design and reached by long unpaved routes or on foot with permission. The honest advice for a visitor is to know the herd exists, understand who manages it, and not go looking for it on an afternoon with a passenger car. It is a fact about this landscape rather than an attraction in it.
Hunting is how most people encounter it, and it is limited
Bison here are managed as a hunted population under the Division of Wildlife Resources, which publishes management plans and takes public comment on them. Permits are limited and the units are administered like any other big game unit in the state. If that is your reason for being interested, the Division is the only place to get current rules, and nothing on a page like this substitutes for the published proclamation.
The details
Getting there
There is no direct route from Price. Access is by long unpaved roads from the corridor or, on the Sego Canyon side, on foot or horseback under a tribal permit.
Before you go
- There is no drive-up bison viewing. Do not plan an afternoon around seeing one.
- The Utah Division of Wildlife Resources is the authority on the herd and on any hunt.
- Roughly 96 percent of the Book Cliffs is Bureau of Land Management ground, but not all of it.
- Cell coverage is absent across almost the entire range.
- Never approach bison. They are wild animals and this is not a park.
Sego Canyon, the one permitted mile
Sego Canyon Road · Permit required · 1 May to 30 November
There is one formally arranged way for the public to walk into the Book Cliffs roadless area from the south, and it exists because of an agreement rather than because of a road. In May 2025 the Utah Division of Wildlife Resources and the Ute Tribe entered a new agreement, replacing one that had lapsed in January 2024, opening roughly one mile of Sego Canyon Road across tribal land to public access.
The terms are specific and they are the whole story. Access runs from 1 May to 30 November each year. It is foot and horseback only, and motorized vehicles including ATVs are not permitted on tribal land. Users need a valid Utah hunting, fishing or combination license and a Tribal Access Permit, with seven business days allowed for processing, and must stay on Sego Canyon Road. Trespass laws are enforced.
The access can be withdrawn
The previous agreement lapsed and there was no public access at all for more than a year. That is the most useful thing to understand about this route. It exists because two governments negotiated it, on terms one of them sets on its own land, and it is not a right of way. Anybody using it who cuts a corner, takes a vehicle in or wanders off the road is spending goodwill that other people will need later.
The Sego Canyon rock art is on the same road
The well known Sego Canyon rock art panel near Thompson Springs is on the same Sego Canyon Road. From the I-70 exit it is about 4 miles north, and it comes up first in most searches for the name. The permit access described here starts farther up that road, past the locked Ute Gate where tribal land begins. It is a permitted route into a roadless area on the Book Cliffs, so driving to the rock art is a different trip from the permit walk.
The details
Getting there
Access is on foot or horseback only, along Sego Canyon Road, under permit. There is no vehicle access across tribal land and no alternative route in from this side.
Before you go
- You need both a valid Utah hunting, fishing or combination license and a Tribal Access Permit.
- Allow seven business days for permit processing. This cannot be arranged on the day.
- Foot and horseback only. No motorized vehicles of any kind, including ATVs.
- Stay on Sego Canyon Road. Trespass laws are enforced on tribal land.
- Confirm current terms with the Utah Division of Wildlife Resources before planning anything.
Book Cliff Ridge Road, the long way in
About 67 miles · Free · Dry weather only
The southern end of the Book Cliffs has a genuine road through it, and it exists because the energy industry needed one. Book Cliff Ridge Road runs about sixty seven miles and serves drilling and oil sites, which is why it is maintained to a standard that suits most vehicles in good conditions rather than being the technical route the surrounding country suggests.
That is a real opportunity and a real trap in the same sentence. Well maintained in optimal conditions is not the same as reliable, and a road built for industry traffic is not built for a family car after rain. The surface here goes from firm to greasy quickly and the distances mean that a mistake is a long recovery. This is a route to plan properly rather than to wander onto.
Say plainly what a passenger car can do
A passenger car can handle the paved corridor, the Nine Mile Canyon road on its paved section, and the three mile access road to the recreation area north of Price in dry conditions. It should not be on Book Cliff Ridge Road after rain, and it should not be sixty seven miles into it in any conditions without a spare it can actually change, water for longer than the trip should take, and somebody who knows where it went.
A quicker way to be up high: Price Canyon Recreation Area
If the goal is simply to be on top of this country rather than under it, Price Canyon Recreation Area gets you to roughly 7,878 feet twelve miles north of Price plus three up an access road, with twelve first come sites at a nightly fee, picnic tables, fire rings and vault toilets, open roughly May to November. It is not the Book Cliffs proper, but it is more than two thousand feet above town and it takes twenty minutes.
The details
Getting there
An unpaved industry route rather than a scenic byway. Get current conditions from the Bureau of Land Management Price Field Office on 435-636-3600 before you commit to any of it.
Before you go
- Dry conditions only. The surface changes character fast after rain.
- Carry water for considerably longer than the trip should take.
- Have a spare you can actually change, and know how.
- There is no mobile coverage. Tell somebody your route and your expected return.
- It serves industry sites, so expect working traffic and give way to it.