The 8 best things to do in Rockville.

Two hundred and seventeen feet of steel in one span, a twelve panel Parker through truss, and the last bridge of its type in Utah still carrying traffic. It has been on the National Register since 1995. Park on the town side and walk it: the truss frames the cliffs at both ends, the river runs underneath, and you get the whole geography of the place in about four minutes.

It is single lane, so yield to anything coming the other way, and it is a working road rather than a monument. The rebuild that saved it, and the vote that paid for it, are covered on the bridge page.

Rockville sits about five miles and ten minutes from the south entrance, close enough that a resident can treat an early morning in the canyon as an ordinary thing rather than a day out. The catch, and it is the whole skill of using Zion from this side, is that Rockville has no shuttle stop of its own, so you drive into the busiest gate in the state, where the park lots tend to fill by mid morning in the warm months.

The move is to arrive early or arrive late, and to check which trails are actually open in a given season rather than trusting a five year old article. My driving into Zion page keeps the current timing, parking, entrance fees and trail status, so this list can stay on Rockville and send the park depth there.

One of the great short drives in Southern Utah and almost nobody in Springdale knows it starts here. The byway leaves Bridge Road, climbs the mesa in a steep rutted mile that is the only genuinely hard part, and runs out across the top to State Route 59 at Apple Valley with Smithsonian Butte on one side and the Zion cliffs filling the mirror.

The BLM is blunt about the climb: not for low clearance vehicles, trailers or motorhomes, and impassable when wet. From the Apple Valley end it is much gentler and most vehicles manage it dry. Road detail, the Wire Mesa trailhead on it, and where Gooseberry Mesa fits are all on the back road guide.

The hike that belongs to this town rather than to the park. From the trailhead south of the bridge the route climbs about a thousand feet over roughly two and three quarter miles to the base of the Eagle Crags themselves, a row of sandstone spires on the north edge of the Canaan Mountain Wilderness, which Congress designated in March 2009 and which covers about 44,500 acres.

The reward is the view back: the mouth of Zion Canyon to the north and Parunuweap Canyon to the east, from an angle no shuttle stop offers. There is no water, no shade worth the name and no permit. The access road wants clearance for its last stretch, and in July you want to be walking before the sun clears the rim.

A separate stop from the ghost town and, for a lot of people, the one that stays with them. The graves run from roughly 1860 to 1910 and the arithmetic on the stones is the story: a settlement on a flooding river, a long way from a doctor, burying a great many children.

Volunteers have cleaned up the plots and reset the old iron fences over the years, so the graves are legible and cared for rather than tumbledown. The families who founded and later rebuilt Grafton are buried here, and a stone or two carry the same surnames you meet on the buildings across the field. Read the stones, stay on the paths and leave the ground alone.

Rockville's own historic core is a walk rather than an attraction, and that suits it. The original pioneer grid still reads along Main Street, with 1860s and 1870s homes, mature trees and no commercial frontage, because the code will not allow any. The town's Historic Preservation Commission looks after it.

The oldest thing standing is the Deseret Telegraph and Post Office, a two story red sandstone building put up in 1864 by Edward Huber, with a frame lean to on the side that held the telegraph key and the mail. It went onto the National Register in February 1972 and has since been restored. It is private property, so look from the street and do not go up the path.

There is no observatory here, no viewing area and nothing to book, which is exactly the point. Rockville has an outdoor lighting chapter in its land use code, no commercial strip to light, and a town plan that intends to keep it that way. Walk to the middle of the bridge on a moonless night and the Milky Way sits over the truss.

Be straight about the paperwork, because this corridor confuses people. Springdale four miles east is a certified International Dark Sky Community and Zion holds a separate dark sky park designation. Rockville holds neither certificate. It just has a code and almost nothing to switch on.