Butterfield Canyon Road, and whether you can drive it right now

No, not as of September 2026. A monsoon storm over the Oquirrhs in July 2026 dropped about 0.7 inches of rain near the mine and washed the road out roughly 5.5 miles up, and it closed the next morning. Salt Lake County Public Works, which oversees that section, has set no reopening date. The Tooele County side of the range and the White Pine campground stayed open throughout; what you cannot do is drive through the pass.

In an ordinary year the road is gated closed from November 1 to June 1, so there are seven months when no version of the drive exists regardless of conditions on the valley floor. Salt Lake County announces the reopening, and in 2023 the gate came off on June 1. Even inside the open window the road can close at short notice, because it crosses ground tied to a working mine and because the Oquirrhs build monsoon storms through July and August.

The paved climb runs about 6.6 miles and gains 2,213 feet, averaging 6.4 percent with the steepest pitches around 15 to 16 percent in the middle. It is a narrow two lane road that pinches further near the top, with loose rock and gravel on the upper part, and the pavement ends before the highest ground does. In dry conditions an ordinary passenger car handles it without drama. In the wet, on the descent, on loose material, it is a different proposition.

No. There is no charge for the road at any time of year. That is worth saying plainly, because people confuse it with the ticketed Rio Tinto Kennecott Visitor Experience, a booked, priced, shuttle based tour reached from a different road with its own season. The two are separate, and arriving at one expecting the other wastes a morning either way.

Yes. A graded dirt spur runs from the top of the canyon to a large parking lot on a rim near nine thousand feet, roughly five miles out and back, and from there you look straight down into the pit. That is the free, unstaffed, seasonal version of the view. The mine itself, its scale and history and the ticketed visitor tour, are covered on the county Oquirrh side page rather than here, because the range spreads across the whole southwest valley rather than sitting inside Herriman.

On the far side of the range it drops into Middle Canyon on graded dirt and reaches Tooele, which makes it one of very few ways to cross the Oquirrhs by car rather than driving around either end. White Pine campground sits on the Tooele County side. Because the crossing spans two counties it carries two sets of conditions, and in the July 2026 closure the Tooele side stayed usable while the through route did not.

At the west end of Herriman Main Street, where the houses stop and the gradient starts, at around 5,300 feet on the city's western edge. That high starting point is why a road reaching a rim near nine thousand feet is only 6.6 paved miles long. There are no services of any kind once you leave Main Street, so fuel, water and food are decisions to make before the last set of houses.

It has a following well out of proportion to the traffic on it, and the reason is simple: a sustained 6.6 mile climb at 6.4 percent average with pitches at 15 to 16 percent, on a quiet road, is a serious piece of work with little like it on this side of the valley. The upper section carries loose rock and gravel and the descent is genuinely hazardous when the surface is wet or dirty, so it rewards a careful descender rather than a fast one.

Butterfield Trailhead Regional Park, at the western edge of Herriman below the canyon, stayed open throughout the 2026 road closure. Salt Lake County opened it on August 31, 2023 with more than 13 miles of multi-use trail, including a link to Yellow Fork Canyon, in a partnership with Rio Tinto Kennecott and the Bureau of Land Management. Motorized vehicles are prohibited across the whole Southwest Canyons network, mountain biking is allowed in designated areas only, and dogs are welcome on a lead.