The river park La Verkin
Free day use, eleven trails, and no water on site
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. Eleven trails, swimming holes, an empty 1929 power plant with the turbine still in it, and the steep new trail down from town.
Start here
Three waters arriving in the same quarter mile of canyon floor.
Confluence Park is 344 acres at the bottom of the gorge below La Verkin, named for what happens there: Ash Creek comes down from the north, La Verkin Creek comes down from the east, and both of them reach the Virgin River inside a short stretch of canyon floor. Washington County administers the park through the Red Cliffs Desert Reserve office rather than through a parks department, which tells you what it is for.
Eleven trails run through it, open to walking, biking and horses, with 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. There is no entry fee, no staff on site, and no water.
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 period when people were seriously trying to farm and power a canyon bottom.
Confluence Park, at a glance
344
acres on the canyon floor
11
trails, foot, bike and horse
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 was granted 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 stabilised, and the right way to see it is from outside.
One correction worth stating plainly, because it circulates locally and it reached this site's own city guide before this page was written: the building is not from 1916. The 1928 permit, the December 1928 construction start and the April 1929 first generation are all documented. The city guide has been corrected.
The power plant dates from 1928 and 1929, not 1916. Dixie Power's permit was granted 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 around, or walk down the face of the cliff.
The park sits several hundred feet below the town it belongs to, which is the single fact that shapes every visit. Driving means going down from the bridge road on the Hurricane side and arriving on the flat with the car near the water. Walking means the Rim to River Trail, which opened in autumn 2024 and drops from behind River Rock Roasting Company on 300 South in stairs and switchbacks cut into basalt.
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 take the car and meet everybody at the bottom.
| By car | On foot | |
|---|---|---|
| Route | Down from the bridge road on the Hurricane side | Rim to River Trail from behind River Rock Roasting |
| Effort | None | Short but genuinely steep, both ways |
| Time | Ten minutes from town | Twenty minutes down, longer back up |
| Best for | A full day, gear, coolers, families with small children | A morning walk and a swim |
The two routes reach the same water. Groups often split, with the walkers going down and the car meeting them.
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 longer term plan is for some of that output to be stored in Chief Toquer Reservoir, the new reservoir filling 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.
Keep reading
More of La Verkin on The Local.
Things to do
The top 8, ranked
Eight picks, ranked, from 107 degree water to a 1929 power plant on the canyon floor.
Read the guideThe hot springs
Zion Canyon Hot Springs
Fifty pools of mineral water, and why the original riverside site is still closed.
Read the guideThe history
The 800 foot tunnel
A dry bench, a river in a gorge, and 800 feet of tunnel as the answer.
Read the guideThe road east
Zion Park Scenic Byway
Mile zero of a 54 mile national byway sits at a junction on the edge of town.
Read the guideMoving here
Two city halls, one valley
Two cities four minutes apart, two of everything, and about 14 percent between them.
Read the guideThe companion
La Verkin, from a local
The springs, the river park, the tunnel and the byway, in one place.
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.
Eleven, and they are open to walking, biking and horseback riding. They connect to the wider Red Cliffs Desert Reserve trail network, and the Rim to River Trail links them 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 was granted 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 autumn 2024. It starts behind River Rock Roasting Company at about 281 W 300 South and 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.
No potable water and very little shade. It is a desert canyon floor with no staff on site, which is why a summer visit should be an early morning proposition and why everything you need has to come in with you.
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.