The history La Verkin
An 1889 company, an 1897 settlement, and a cliff in the way
The 800 foot tunnel that made La Verkin possible.
Good ground with no water on it, and a river a few hundred feet down in a gorge. The fix the founders landed on was a canal cut along a cliff and a tunnel driven straight through the limestone, and just about everything La Verkin became follows from that.
By Scott Buehler, La Verkin local
Updated September 2026
The short answer
The 800 foot tunnel is the hard middle of La Verkin's original irrigation canal: a passage driven by hand through the limestone cliff east of town in the 1890s, so that water pulled out of the Virgin River upstream could run by gravity onto the dry bench the town was built on. You cannot walk it as a maintained trail, and I would not send anyone into an old irrigation structure on ground that is not theirs, but the line of the canal still shows from the gorge rim, and the reason the whole thing had to exist is visible in one glance from the old grid. A fruit company took it on in 1889, settlers followed in 1897, and the tunnel is the piece of engineering that stands between the plan and the town. One thing to get straight up front: this is not the Hurricane Canal across the gorge, which is a separate and longer project with its own trail and its own story.
Start here
A good bench with the water several hundred feet underneath it.
Stand anywhere on the old grid in La Verkin and you can see the problem the founders faced in one glance. The ground is flat, warm, and long enough in the growing season to ripen almost anything. The river that would water it sits at the bottom of a gorge a few hundred feet below, and this corner of the state gets under a foot of rain in a normal year. Good dirt, no water on it.
The answer they arrived at in the 1890s was to stop trying to lift water and start carrying it. Take it out of the river far enough upstream that gravity does the work, run it along the canyon wall, and deliver it onto the bench at the near end. It is a simple idea that turns out to require blasting a ledge for a canal along a cliff face, and then driving a tunnel straight through the rock where the cliff gives you nothing to follow.
The company that took it on incorporated in June 1889 as the La Verkin Fruit and Nursery Company, with $25,000 of capital stock and a written plan for orchards and vineyards on this ground. A December 1888 survey by Thomas P. Cottam and Thomas Judd had already run the numbers. Settlers followed in 1897, and the city itself did not incorporate until 1927, a full thirty years after people were living here, which is a fair measure of how long the water took to become reliable.
The canal, at a glance
800 ft
of tunnel through limestone
1889
the fruit company incorporates
1897
settlement on the bench
1927
the city incorporates
The hard part
Eight hundred feet of rock, worked from both ends at once.
The canal leaves the Virgin River on the north side, roughly two and a half miles above the La Verkin hot springs, and clings to the canyon wall for about a mile and a half. Most of that stretch was cut into the face of the cliff, some through solid limestone and some through the talus that has broken off the ledges above, which is its own headache because talus moves. The part everyone remembers is where the cliff gave no option at all: a tunnel driven straight through the Kaibab limestone escarpment east of the bench. Most accounts put it at roughly 800 feet, and a few of the older ones say closer to 900. I would not stake my life on the exact figure, but it is somewhere in that range, and it is a long way to go through solid rock with the tools they had.
The story that has come down locally is that crews worked it from both ends and met in the middle, and that the two headings lined up almost exactly. Whether that is precisely true or the polished version told at enough family reunions, I cannot prove either way, so I will pass it along as what the town says about itself rather than assert it flat. The first years were rough regardless: gypsum in the rock kept dissolving out of the ditch, in the canyon and in the tunnel both, and there were seasons when the water failed right when it was needed most. They eventually lined the worst of it with lumber to hold it.
What is not in doubt is the result. Water reached the bench, and everything La Verkin became follows from that: the orchards, the deep lots a gravity ditch made sensible, the fruit and the alfalfa, and eventually a power plant at the bottom of the canyon running off the same canal.
This is not the Hurricane Canal, and the two get confused constantly. Hurricane's canal was a separate and even longer effort on the other side of the gorge, built between 1893 and 1904, with water reaching the Hurricane bench on August 6, 1904. It ran about seven and a half miles, took a dozen tunnels of its own, and has its own marker, its own trail, and its own town telling its story over on the Hurricane pages. The 800 foot tunnel described here is La Verkin's.
Seeing it today
Can you actually go and see the tunnel?
The honest answer is not really, at least not the way people hope. The canal and the tunnel are working irrigation infrastructure, much of it crossing private ground and all of it cut into a steep gorge, and I am not going to point anyone into an old rock tunnel on land that is not theirs. There is no maintained public trail through the La Verkin works, and it is best treated as history you read about rather than history you climb into.
What you can do is see the country it runs through. The line of the canal shows from parts of the gorge rim, and the trail system down in Confluence Park covers the ground the water was taken across, including the confluence where the power plant later sat. If it is the hands-on version of pioneer canal building you are after, the maintained and signed option in this valley is the Hurricane Canal Trail across the gorge, which was built for exactly that, and Hurricane tells that story on its own pages.
Either way, respect the terrain. The gorge is steep and the footing along the rim is loose sandstone and talus that moves under you. Treat any rim view as a place to stand and look, keep children and dogs back from the edge, and save the scrambling for a maintained trail.
What the water built
Fruit first, then lots, then a power plant.
The first crop was the whole point of the exercise. Peaches, grapes, figs and alfalfa went in on ground that had grown sagebrush, and for decades the identity of the place was orchard rather than suburb. The physical evidence is still the most obvious thing about the old grid: the lots run deep, because a gravity ditch feeding long rows is what the layout was designed around, and nobody has ever had a reason to redraw the historic blocks the way a modern plan would.
The second thing the canal built was electricity, which nobody planned on. In 1928 Dixie Power moved to put a hydroelectric plant on the riverbank at the confluence, fed off the same La Verkin Canal, and it generated from 1929 until the early 1980s. The empty building is still down there with the turbine inside it. I keep the full story of that plant on the Confluence Park page, because that is where you actually stand next to it.
The third thing is harder to point at and easier to feel: a town that treats water as a subject rather than a utility. You still hear it in how this valley talks about wells, shares and treatment. When a place has to drill 800 feet through a cliff to get its first drink, water never quite becomes something that just comes out of a tap.
| The old grid | The bench subdivisions | |
|---|---|---|
| Laid out for | A gravity ditch feeding long rows | Cars, views and modern lot standards |
| Lot shape | Deep, narrow, orchard blocks | Wider, shallower, view oriented |
| Housing | Pioneer era homes and mid century infill | Mostly 1990s onward |
| What you are buying | Ground with a history and a mature canopy | A newer house with a longer view |
Both are La Verkin. The canal is the reason they look nothing alike.
The name
Where "La Verkin" comes from, and why nobody can settle it.
One reading takes the name as a worn down version of the Spanish la virgen, after the Virgin River the town sits above. It is tidy, it fits the geography, and it is the version most visitors get told.
The other reading points at a letter dated June 26, 1852, from John Steele and J.C.L. Smith, that calls the creek Leiver Skin. The argument runs that an early writer transposed a letter and that the original was Beaver Skin, which would make the name a fur trade artifact rather than a Spanish one. Early court records list it as Leiversking, too. That version has the awkward virtue of being written down earlier than anybody was arguing about it.
My honest position is that the record supports both and settles neither, and the town has never been in a hurry to decide. It is the rare local argument where nobody actually wants a resolution, and asking about it in the right room is a good way to lose an afternoon.
A town that drilled 800 feet through a cliff to get water onto a bench has never felt much pressure to also settle what to call itself.
Scott Buehler
Moving Utah About Scott
Keep reading
More of La Verkin on The Local.
Things to do
The top 8, ranked
My ranked eight for the town, from mineral pools to the byway east and the river park below.
Read the guideThe hot springs
Zion Canyon Hot Springs
Around fifty soaking pools on 107 degree mineral water, and why the old riverside site stays shut.
Read the guideThe river park
Confluence Park
The 344 acre river park below town, where the canal's old power plant still stands by the water.
Read the guideThe road east
Zion Park Scenic Byway
Mile zero of a 54 mile national byway sits at the UT-9 junction on the edge of town.
Read the guideMoving here
Two city halls, one valley
La Verkin and Hurricane sit four minutes apart with two of everything, and what that means for a buyer.
Read the guideThe companion
La Verkin, from a local
The springs, the river park, this tunnel and the byway, gathered on one local page.
Read the pageQuick answers
The history, answered.
It is the hardest section of La Verkin's first irrigation canal, a passage driven by hand through the limestone cliff east of the bench in the 1890s. It let water taken from the Virgin River upstream run by gravity onto the dry ground the town was built on. Without it there is no orchard, no old grid, and arguably no town.
The La Verkin Fruit and Nursery Company, which incorporated in June 1889 with $25,000 of capital stock and a written plan for orchards and vineyards on the bench. A preliminary survey by Thomas P. Cottam and Thomas Judd in December 1888 had already sized up the job, and a working survey by Isaac C. MacFarlane followed in early 1889.
No, and the two get confused constantly. The Hurricane Canal was a separate and longer effort on the other side of the gorge, built between 1893 and 1904, running about seven and a half miles with a dozen tunnels of its own, and water reached the Hurricane bench on August 6, 1904. It has its own marker and its own trail. La Verkin's canal and its 800 foot tunnel are a different project on a different bench.
Roughly 800 feet, driven through the Kaibab limestone escarpment east of the bench, though a few of the older accounts put it closer to 900. Local tradition says crews worked it from both ends and that the two headings met almost exactly, which is the story the town tells about itself.
Not as a maintained public route, and I will not send anyone into a working or abandoned irrigation structure on ground that is not theirs. The canal alignment is visible from parts of the gorge rim, the trail system in Confluence Park below covers the country the water was taken through, and the maintained pioneer canal walk in this valley is the Hurricane Canal Trail across the gorge.
Settlement dates from 1897, and the city did not incorporate until 1927, thirty years later. The fruit company behind the canal had incorporated earlier still, in June 1889, which tells you how long the water took to become reliable enough to build a town on.
Because they were laid out for a gravity ditch feeding long rows of fruit trees. Orchard blocks want depth rather than frontage, and nobody has had a reason to redraw the historic grid since. The newer bench subdivisions were laid out for cars and views instead, which is why the two parts of town look nothing alike.
Yes. In 1928 Dixie Power moved to build a hydroelectric plant on the riverbank at the confluence, fed off the same La Verkin Canal, and it generated from 1929 into the early 1980s. The empty building still stands in Confluence Park with the turbine inside it, and I keep the full story on the Confluence Park page.
Nobody has settled it. One reading makes it a worn down version of the Spanish la virgen, for the Virgin River. The other points to a letter dated June 26, 1852 that calls the creek Leiver Skin, possibly a garbled Beaver Skin from the fur trade era. The record supports both readings and proves neither.
A town that had to earn its own water is worth understanding before you buy in it.
The old grid and the newer bench subdivisions here are genuinely different kinds of home, laid out a century apart for different reasons, and the difference shows up in lot shape, shade, and what a remodel actually involves. That is the sort of thing I would rather walk you through in person.
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