Zion's other door New Harmony
A separate entrance, ten minutes down the freeway
Kolob Canyons, the Zion entrance with this town's address on it.
Zion National Park has two front doors forty miles apart. This is the quiet one: five miles of scenic road, a shaded creek walk past two homestead cabins, an overlook that shows you a hundred miles of Arizona, and the second longest arch in the world at the end of a fourteen mile day. No shuttle, no timed entry.
Start here
Zion has two front doors and this one has a New Harmony address.
Kolob Canyons is a separate entrance to Zion National Park, at Interstate 15 exit 40, about forty miles by road from the main entrance at Springdale. It has its own visitor center, its own five mile scenic road and its own trail system, and the two ends of the park operate so differently that on a busy weekend they barely feel like the same place.
New Harmony is the nearest town to it. That is not a marketing line: the Kolob Canyons Visitor Center's own street address is 3752 East Kolob Canyon Road, New Harmony, Utah 84757. No other town on The Local can say a national park visitor center carries its postal address, and it is the reason this page names the trails rather than admiring the view from a distance.
What Kolob does not have is the machinery that defines the other end. No shuttle. No timed entry. No lottery on the day hikes. You drive the road yourself, park where you like, and walk. The entrance fee is the same pass that works in Springdale, which is worth knowing because a lot of visitors buy one there and never realise it covers this.
Kolob Canyons, at a glance
Exit 40
two exits south of the New Harmony interchange
5 mi
of scenic road to the picnic area
20+ mi
of trail in this section of the park
287 ft
the span of Kolob Arch at the end of it
The drive
Five miles up into a set of finger canyons.
The scenic road climbs from the visitor center at the interchange into a run of deep, narrow canyons cut into the same red Navajo sandstone that colours the main canyon. There are pullouts and short walks along the way, and the road ends at a picnic area with restrooms and the Timber Creek Overlook trailhead. Driving it and walking the overlook takes about ninety minutes and it is the single best introduction to this end of the park.
The reason it is quiet is arithmetic. Almost everybody who plans a Zion trip plans it around Springdale, because that is where the lodging, the shuttle and the famous trails are. This entrance is forty miles up the freeway from all of that, and the practical consequence is a park road that rarely fills its car parks in a season when the other one turns people away.
It is not indestructible. In March 2023 rangers noticed a depressed patch in the pavement and closed the road as a precaution, and it then began to collapse in earnest. The rebuild started that September: crews excavated the unstable material, reinforced the base to a depth of eight feet with geo grid, structural cloth and compacted soil, repaved more than six thousand square feet, and added ditches, gutters and curbs to get water off it. It reopened on 29 November 2023.
The upper road can close after heavy snow, and this is a 6,000 foot road. Kolob Canyons is open year round and closes far less often than the higher park roads elsewhere in the state, but the top of this drive is high enough that a serious storm shuts it temporarily. Check the park's current conditions page in winter rather than assuming, particularly if you are driving up from the low desert where it is not snowing at all.
The walk to do first
Taylor Creek, two cabins and an alcove.
The Middle Fork of Taylor Creek leaves a pullout 2.1 miles up the road and runs 2.2 miles to the Double Arch Alcove, gaining only about five hundred feet along the way. It crosses its own creek more than a dozen times, stays shaded and cool deep in the canyon even in summer, and ends at a huge undercut in the sandstone with water seeping down the back of it in black and white streaks. Allow three to five hours.
Two cabins stand on the route. The Larson cabin comes first, built in 1930 by Gustav Larson out of white fir logs hauled in by wagon from Cedar City, sitting at about 5,645 feet, where he spent the summers of 1930 through 1933 homesteading this country and raising pigs. The Fife cabin is roughly half a mile further on, from the same period. Both are federal historic structures and neither is a place to shelter or picnic inside.
The canyon also cuts straight through the Kanarra anticline, an upwarp that formed about a hundred million years ago during the Sevier orogeny and runs nearly forty miles from Toquerville north to Cedar City. Only its eastern limb is exposed today, because the crest and the western half were dropped out of sight by the Hurricane fault. On the ground that means the rock layers tilt visibly as you walk up the creek.
A man hauled white fir logs by wagon from Cedar City in 1930 to build a cabin in a canyon that is now inside a national park. It is still standing beside the trail.
The trail menu
Four choices, and the gap between them is enormous.
This section holds over twenty miles of trail, and the useful thing to understand is how far apart the easy end and the hard end sit. There is nothing in the middle.
| Distance | Gain | Time | Permit | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Timber Creek Overlook | 1.2 miles round trip | About 117 feet | 30 to 60 minutes | None |
| Taylor Creek to the alcove | 4.4 miles round trip | About 500 feet | 3 to 5 hours | None |
| Kolob Arch from Lee Pass | About 14 miles round trip | About 1,000 feet | A long day | Only to camp |
| La Verkin Creek overnight | Varies by campsite | Varies | One or two nights | Wilderness permit |
Group size is capped at twelve for wilderness travel, and the Timber Creek Overlook Trail is the only route in this section where affiliated groups larger than twelve are permitted at all.
The overlook trail is six tenths of a mile each way from the picnic area at the end of the road, gaining about 117 feet and losing about 103, along a rocky ridge with steps up to eighteen inches and a couple of tight passages between boulders. It is short rather than flat. What it delivers is Shuntavi Butte, the length of Timber Creek, the Kolob Terrace country behind it, the Pine Valley Mountains over your shoulder, and on a clear day Mount Trumbull out on the Arizona Strip about a hundred miles away.
Kolob Arch is the other end of the scale. It spans roughly 287 feet, which makes it the second longest arch in the world behind Landscape Arch in Arches National Park, and it sits seven miles up the La Verkin Creek Trail from Lee Pass. The catch is the profile: you lose elevation walking in and gain it walking out, at the end of fourteen miles. There are thirteen designated campsites along the creek for anyone who would rather split it.
One more thing about the arch, because it disappoints people who have Arches National Park in their heads. There is no way to walk up underneath it. The trail reaches a viewpoint across the drainage and that is where it stops.
The wilderness permit is not issued at this end of the park. The Kolob Canyons Visitor Center does not write wilderness permits. They are reserved online and collected at the Zion Canyon Visitor Center in Springdale, either the day before or the day of the trip, which is a forty mile detour from this trailhead. More Kolob backpacking plans fall apart on that single administrative fact than on weather.
The practical part
What it costs and when the desk is open.
A private vehicle pass to Zion National Park runs 35 dollars in 2026 and covers seven consecutive days at both entrances. Interagency annual passes work here in the ordinary way. Every visitor has to stop at the Kolob Canyons Visitor Center on the way in to show the pass or buy one, which means the visitor center's opening hours are effectively the road's opening hours for anyone arriving without a pass in hand.
Citizenship now changes the price, which is a genuinely new thing at this gate. Anyone who is not a resident of the United States has, since the start of 2026, owed a further hundred dollars a head from their sixteenth birthday upward, unless they are travelling on a two hundred and fifty dollar annual pass that carries the holder plus whoever else is in one non commercial vehicle. Eleven parks charge it and Zion is among them. Households hosting relatives from overseas should work the total out at the kitchen table rather than at the desk.
The visitor center itself is small compared with the operation in Springdale: rangers, basic exhibits, restrooms, and no full concessions. It runs daily except Christmas Day, roughly eight to five in spring and summer and eight to four thirty in autumn and winter, and it closes for an hour in the middle of the day. Confirm the current hours with the park rather than relying on that shape.
The fee picture in 2026
35 dollars
private vehicle, seven consecutive days, both entrances
100 dollars
non resident surcharge per person aged 16 and over
250 dollars
the non resident annual pass alternative
Eleven
parks where the surcharge applies
Keep reading
More of New Harmony on The Local.
Things to do
The top 8, ranked
Eight picks, ranked, from a creek walk past two 1930 cabins to a valley with nothing in the sky.
Read the guideThe mountain
The Comanche Trail
A trail that leaves town on an 1860s irrigation ditch and ends on the crest of the range.
Read the guideThe first town
Fort Harmony
The adobe fort that held the county seat, and the twenty eight days of rain that ended it.
Read the guideThe water
The Town Ditch
Six miles of canal cut in 1865, four water companies now, and a reservoir that leaks.
Read the guideMoving here
Five acres and a well
Two rulebooks, two lines on the map, and 294 lots that were sold and never built on.
Read the guideThe companion
New Harmony, from a local
The park entrance, the trail, the fort and the water, in one place.
Read the pageQuick answers
Kolob Canyons, answered.
About ten miles and twelve to fifteen minutes. Kolob Canyons sits at Interstate 15 exit 40, two exits south of the New Harmony interchange at exit 42, and the drive runs out SR-144 to the freeway and then south. There is no direct road between the town and the Kolob interchange, because the ground between them is federal and county records show opening a road across it would take an act of Congress.
Yes. It is the park's northwest section and it has its own entrance, visitor center and scenic road, roughly forty miles by road from the main entrance at Springdale. The same entrance pass works at both. What differs is everything about the visit: there is no shuttle system at Kolob, no timed entry reservation, and nowhere near the crowd that defines the main canyon in peak season.
A private vehicle pass runs 35 dollars and covers seven consecutive days at both park entrances, and interagency annual passes are accepted in the usual way. Visitors who are not United States residents also pay a surcharge introduced on 1 January 2026 across eleven national parks: 100 dollars per person aged sixteen and over, or a 250 dollar non resident annual pass covering the holder and other passengers in one non commercial vehicle.
Taylor Creek to the Double Arch Alcove, for most people. It is 4.4 miles round trip from a trailhead 2.1 miles up the scenic road, gains only about 500 feet, stays shaded in the bottom of the canyon, crosses the creek more than a dozen times, and passes two homestead cabins built around 1930 before reaching a huge undercut alcove. Allow three to five hours.
About six tenths of a mile each way, gaining roughly 117 feet and losing about 103, and most visitors spend thirty to sixty minutes on it. It starts at the picnic area at the end of the five mile scenic road and follows a rocky ridge with steps up to eighteen inches to a view of Shuntavi Butte, Timber Creek, the Kolob Terrace and the Pine Valley Mountains, with Mount Trumbull visible about a hundred miles away on a clear day.
Homesteaders, around 1930. The first one you reach is the Larson cabin, built in 1930 by Gustav Larson from white fir logs hauled in by wagon from Cedar City, at about 5,645 feet, where he spent the summers of 1930 through 1933 homesteading the Kolob country and raising pigs. The Fife cabin sits roughly half a mile further up the Middle Fork. Both are protected historic structures and should be looked at rather than entered.
Not for a day hike, but you do to camp, and the permit is not issued at Kolob. Zion wilderness permits are reserved online and collected at the Zion Canyon Visitor Center in Springdale, about forty miles from the Lee Pass trailhead, either the day before or the day of the trip. There are thirteen designated campsites along the La Verkin Creek Trail and wilderness group size is capped at twelve people.
Occasionally, after heavy snow, because the upper stretch is high enough to hold it. It closes far less often than the higher park roads elsewhere in Utah, so checking the park's current conditions page in winter is worth doing rather than assuming either way. The road also closed for most of 2023 after it began to collapse in March that year, and reopened on 29 November 2023 following a full rebuild.
Yes, with one restriction that catches organised groups out. Affiliated groups larger than twelve people are permitted only on the Timber Creek Overlook Trail at the end of the scenic road. Everywhere else in this section, including Taylor Creek and the wilderness routes, the twelve person cap applies. If you are travelling with a reunion or a youth group, plan the day around that trail.
A national park entrance ten minutes from the front door.
Proximity like this shows up in what a parcel is worth, and it rarely shows up in a listing description. If you are weighing ground in this valley, I can tell you what the drive really means day to day rather than on a brochure.