The Smithsonian Butte backway, from the bench end

It runs about nine miles between SR-59 on the Apple Valley bench and SR-9 at Rockville, climbing past Smithsonian Butte across open plateau country and dropping into the Virgin River corridor at the northern end. The Bureau of Land Management designates it a National Backcountry Byway. In dry weather it is the scenic shortcut between this bench and Zion's south entrance.

High clearance is recommended for the whole route and is genuinely necessary at the Rockville end, where a steep rutted climb off Grafton Road past the 1924 bridge is the section the BLM warns low clearance vehicles away from. From the Apple Valley end the gradients are moderate and the surface is generally reasonable in dry conditions, which is why this is described as the forgiving direction.

That parts of the surface turn to clay, and clay of this kind packs into tire treads until a vehicle effectively has none, on a road with gradients and side slopes. It is a description rather than a caution. A monsoon cell lasting twenty minutes can put the road out of use for a day or more, and conditions at one end tell you nothing reliable about conditions in the middle.

Shorter in miles and not reliably shorter in time, and that distinction matters. The paved route is SR-59 northwest to Hurricane and then SR-9 east, about fifty minutes to Zion's south entrance, and it works whatever the weather has been doing. Take the byway when the drive itself is the objective and there is time in hand. Take the pavement when you need to be somewhere at a particular hour.

None at all. No fuel, no water, no toilets, no services and no reliable phone signal along its length. Nine miles is not far until something goes wrong on it, so carry water, make sure the vehicle is in a state to complete the whole route rather than half of it, and tell somebody which direction you are travelling and roughly when you expect to come out the other side.

Only the first part. The Gooseberry Mesa trailhead is about six miles of dirt off SR-59, and the approach starts on the Smithsonian Butte road, so it shares its first stretch with this byway before turning off to its own trailhead. The riding on the mesa belongs to the Hurricane companion on this site. Eagle Crags and Wire Mesa are likewise separate, on the Rockville end of this country, and the Rockville companion covers both along with the north half of this byway.

During a settled dry spell, and ideally with the light working for you. Late afternoon on the northbound run puts the Zion towers ahead of you with the sun behind, and early morning southbound gives the butte its own shadow and the plateau its texture. Avoid the monsoon months entirely unless you have watched the weather for several days, and never start it under a building storm.

No, and nobody here does. It is a fine weather amenity and a poor infrastructure assumption, because it becomes unusable several times a year without notice and there is no alternative once you are committed to it. Residents of this bench run their working week on SR-59 to Hurricane and take the byway when the conditions and the mood coincide. That is the right way to think about it as a buyer too.

Yes, on the Rockville companion, which owns the north half of this road on this site: the fork past the 1924 bridge, the steep rutted climb off Grafton Road that the BLM warns low clearance vehicles away from, Wire Mesa and Eagle Crags into the Canaan Mountain Wilderness. This page deliberately covers the Apple Valley end and the plateau, and does not describe the other town's half in detail.