The river park
By Scott Buehler, Southern Utah localUpdated October 2026
Confluence Park, where three waters meet under the town
A 344 acre county park on the canyon floor below La Verkin, where Ash Creek and La Verkin Creek both reach the Virgin River. Trails along the water, swimming holes, an empty 1929 power plant with the turbine still in it, and the steep trail down from town.
Down the river
Free day use, open water, and a steep walk down from town
The short answer
Confluence Park is La Verkin's riverfront park, 344 acres on the floor of the Virgin River gorge between La Verkin and Hurricane, where Ash Creek and La Verkin Creek both reach the Virgin River. What is down there is open water you can wade or sit in, a web of short trails along the river and up the side canyons, the confluence itself, and an empty 1929 power plant with its turbine still bolted inside. Day use is free and the gate is never staffed. Two things shape every visit: the park sits several hundred feet below town, so every way in ends with a walk down, from the North Trailhead lot or along the steep Rim to River Trail, and it is a desert canyon floor, so you carry your own water and count on shade only under the cottonwoods by the river.
Start here
Three waters arriving in the same quarter mile of canyon floor
The name is literal. Ash Creek comes in from the north past Toquerville, La Verkin Creek comes down from the Kolob country to the north, and both of them reach the Virgin River inside the same short stretch of canyon floor. Washington County runs the park through the Red Cliffs Desert Reserve office rather than a parks department, which tells you what it is for: this is protected river bottom and wildlife habitat first, and a place to spend an afternoon second.
The trails run from graded doubletrack to short singletrack, open to walking and casual biking, with horses on the main Confluence Trail and camping allowed by permit. The river runs shallow and slow enough in places to sit in, which in a desert county is most of the appeal, and the giant cottonwoods along the water are about the only real shade you will find down there.
What people do not expect is the buildings. An empty hydroelectric plant stands beside the water with its turbine still bolted down, a grain silo stands nearby, and so does an old dairy, all of them left over from a stretch of years when people were seriously trying to farm and power a canyon bottom.
For a buyer, this is the kind of open space that does not change. It is public river bottom you cannot build on and will not lose to a subdivision, a few minutes below a small town that sits right at the SR-9 gateway to Zion. A La Verkin address near the rim is minutes from all of it.
Confluence Park, at a glance
344
acres on the canyon floor
3
waters meet on the canyon floor
1929
the year the power plant started generating
Free
day use, camping by permit
The building in the middle of it
An 899 kilowatt plant that ran for fifty four years and then stopped
Dixie Power applied for a permit in 1928 to build a hydroelectric plant on the bank of the Virgin River here, rated at 899 kilowatts and costing somewhere around $90,000. Construction started that December. Water came to it through roughly a thousand feet of 42 inch wooden pipe fed off the La Verkin Canal, the same canal that made the town possible, and by April 1929 the plant was generating. It was the largest of the four plants Dixie Power ran in this county at the time, and it kept going until 1983.
The turbine and machinery are still inside the shell. That is unusual: most abandoned generating stations get stripped for the metal long before they get old enough to be interesting. It is a ruin rather than a museum, it is not stabilized, and the right way to see it is from outside.
One correction worth stating plainly, because it circulates locally: the building is not from 1916. The 1928 permit, the December 1928 construction start and the April 1929 first generation are all documented.
The power plant dates from 1928 and 1929, not 1916. Dixie Power applied for its permit in 1928, construction ran through that winter, and the plant generated from April 1929 until 1983. Several local descriptions give an earlier date, which belongs to a different era of Washington County power generation rather than to this building.
Two ways in
Drive to the rim, or walk down the face of the cliff
The park sits a couple hundred feet below the town, and that shapes every visit. There is no road down to the water. The main entrance is the North Trailhead: from State Street, turn west on 900 North into Riverwoods and follow the dirt road about half a mile south to the lot. From there you walk down. Or walk in from town on the Rim to River Trail. It opened in fall 2024 and drops from a dirt lot on 300 South, near River Rock Roasting, in stairs and switchbacks.
The trail was built by a Southern Utah company called Walls and Falls, paid for by La Verkin City with a Utah State Recreational Trails Program grant and a Washington County contribution, with the nonprofit Trails Utah handling the grants and oversight and River Rock Roasting granting the easement. It zigzags rather than traverses because the rock does not allow anything gentler, and the city has signed it and asked people to stay off the loose basalt walls beside the stairs.
The honest planning note is that the descent takes a fraction of the time the climb out does. Anyone in the group who finds stairs hard in heat should drive to the 900 North entrance instead of taking the stair route. It has restrooms.
| By car | On foot | |
|---|---|---|
| Route | North Trailhead lot, off 900 North in Riverwoods | Rim to River Trail from the 300 South trailhead near River Rock Roasting |
| Effort | A walk down from the lot, and back up | Short but genuinely steep, both ways |
| Time | A few minutes to the lot, then the walk | Twenty minutes down, longer back up |
| Best for | Parking close to a trail in | A morning walk and a swim |
The routes reach the same water. Every one of them ends with a walk down and a climb back up.
The other plant, and this one is running
Utah's first reuse facility of its kind, online since February 2026
The Confluence Park Water Reclamation Facility went online on 9 February 2026, after more than two years of construction and, by the district's account, about twenty years of planning. It cost roughly $51 million, it is built to treat up to 1.5 million gallons a day, and it is the first plant of its kind in Utah: rather than treating wastewater and returning it to the river, it treats it to a standard that lets it go straight back out for irrigation.
It serves La Verkin, Toquerville and part of Hurricane, and the reclaimed water goes to lawns, parks and other green space in those communities. The system is designed to route some of that output into Chief Toquer Reservoir, the reservoir near Anderson Junction, which is why a project on La Verkin's canyon floor keeps turning up in Toquerville's news.
For a buyer this matters in a way a nature park does not. Sewer capacity is what decides whether a small city can approve the next subdivision, and this one just added a lot of it. The mover page takes that thread further.
One hydroelectric plant closed here in 1983 and one reclamation plant opened in 2026. In both cases the canyon floor was where the county put the thing it needed and did not want to look at.
Scott Buehler
Moving Utah About Scott
Keep reading
More of La Verkin on The Local
Things to do
The top 8, ranked
Where the river park lands on the ranked list of eight, alongside the hot springs, the tunnel and the byway east.
Read the guideThe hot springs
Zion Canyon Hot Springs
About fifty soaking pools on 107 degree mineral water up on the rim, and the story of the closed canyon site below.
Read the guideThe history
The 800 foot tunnel
How La Verkin got its water across the gorge, and the 800 foot tunnel that made the town farmable.
Read the guideThe road east
Zion Park Scenic Byway
The junction at the edge of town is mile zero of the 54 mile drive east to Zion's south gate.
Read the guideMoving here
Two city halls, one valley
La Verkin and Hurricane, four minutes apart across the river, and what it is like to live between them.
Read the guideThe companion
La Verkin, from a local
Everything La Verkin, the springs, this river park, the tunnel and the byway, gathered on one page.
Read the pageQuick answers
The park, answered
On the floor of the Virgin River gorge between La Verkin and Hurricane, several hundred feet below La Verkin itself. It covers 344 acres and is named for the point where Ash Creek and La Verkin Creek both reach the Virgin River within a short stretch of canyon.
Day use is free. There is no entry fee and no staffed gate. Camping in the park requires a permit from Washington County, which administers the ground through the Red Cliffs Desert Reserve office.
A web of short trails on the canyon floor, from graded doubletrack to singletrack, open to walking and casual biking, with horses on the main Confluence Trail. They connect to the wider Red Cliffs Desert Reserve network, and the Rim to River Trail links them up to the town of La Verkin on the rim above.
In places, yes. The Virgin River runs shallow and slow enough through parts of the park to sit in, and locals treat a few spots as swimming holes. There are no lifeguards and no facilities, and river conditions change with runoff and with storms upstream.
A hydroelectric plant. Dixie Power applied for a permit in 1928 to build an 899 kilowatt plant here for roughly $90,000, fed by about a thousand feet of 42 inch wooden pipe off the La Verkin Canal. It began generating in April 1929 and ran until 1983, and the turbine and machinery are still inside the empty shell.
On the Rim to River Trail, which opened in fall 2024. It starts at a dirt lot at about 281 W 300 South, next to the animal control building and near River Rock Roasting Company. It drops through stairs and switchbacks cut into basalt to the canyon floor. It is short and steep, and the climb back out is the hard half.
Plan to bring your own water. Restrooms are at the 900 North entrance and the south trailhead in Hurricane. There is no drinking water on the canyon floor, and the only real shade is under the cottonwoods along the river. There is no staff on site, so a summer visit should be an early morning proposition with everything you need carried in.
The Confluence Park Water Reclamation Facility, which went online on 9 February 2026. It cost roughly $51 million, treats up to 1.5 million gallons a day for La Verkin, Toquerville and part of Hurricane, and is the first facility in Utah built to send its treated output straight back out for irrigation rather than to the river.
It needs respect. The canyon collects water from two creeks and a river, and the washes running into it can flash from storms well upstream that are not visible from the park itself. Between July and September, check the forecast for the whole drainage rather than for the sky overhead.
A county park, a river and a reclamation plant, all on the same canyon floor
Confluence Park is the sort of amenity that shows up in a listing description as one line and matters far more than that in practice. If you want the honest picture of what a specific La Verkin address is actually near, that is a conversation worth having.
Or call me: (435) 357-4345or send me a message
Keep going
Continue your La Verkin research
Eight more doors into La Verkin, chosen for what this page covers.
Questions about La Verkin?
Call me, send a message, or find out what your La Verkin home is worth. No pressure, no obligation.