Old Highway 91, and where it still goes.

In 1973 Interstate 15 opened through the Virgin River Gorge south and west of St. George, the piece that let the freeway carry the route between Utah and southern California past this end of the county. The state formally gave up the old highway through here in 1974, and for the roadside businesses that had grown up along it, that was the hard part of the story. The fruit stands and small stops that lined the street through town did not all survive the change.

For the buildings, it was the opposite. A street that keeps carrying through traffic gets widened and rebuilt every generation. A street the through traffic stops using just sits there. That is the real reason Santa Clara still has its pioneer core, a 1907 Relief Society House, an 1863 home running free tours daily, and a parade route in September.

Locals will tell you the freeway stung and then say, in the next breath, that it is the reason the town looks the way it does. Both are true.

At its peak something like two dozen fruit stands lined the old highway through this valley, selling to the drivers coming through on the main road between Salt Lake and the south. Frei's Market is the one that stayed, family run since 1956, and stopping for fruit in season is one of the few genuine local rituals left on the street.

It helps to know why the fruit was here at all. The Swiss families who arrived in 1861 planted this valley because a river ran through it and the growing season barely stops. The orchards came first, the highway came second, and the stands came third.

Hours move with the harvest the way any produce stand's do, so check before you go out of your way. Summer and fall are the seasons for it, and the stop is best treated as the beginning of the drive rather than the whole of it.

Past the last houses the road climbs out of the irrigated valley and into country that looks nothing like the metro behind it. It runs along the edge of the Shivwits lands, where the fields give way to open desert and juniper hills, and reaches Gunlock State Park about fifteen miles up. There, in a bowl of red rock, sits Gunlock Reservoir, and on a weekday you will often have the water almost to yourself.

The falls below the dam get the photographs every spring, and they deserve the caveat that always travels with them. They depend entirely on snowpack and runoff, they do not run in most years, and they can appear and vanish inside a few weeks. I would not plan a drive around them. The reservoir is the reliable reason to go, and anything else is a bonus.

Keep going and the road climbs toward the SR-18 country around Veyo, higher ground where the desert gives way to juniper and black lava and the air is noticeably cooler. Pine Valley Mountain stands over the whole scene to the east. For people who live in the summer heat down here, it is the standard escape. The same country from the Veyo end, including the loop back down the highway, is covered on the Gunlock road guide.

The whole thing works as a half day, and it is the drive I send out of town guests on. Start on the historic drive with the Jacob Hamblin Home and Heritage Square, stop at the market if the season is right, then point the car northwest and let the road do the rest. Gunlock and back is a couple of hours with real time at the water. Carrying on to Veyo and coming back by the highway makes it a proper afternoon.

Fuel and food are in town, not out on the road. Cell coverage thins as you climb, and between the last houses and the reservoir there is nothing in the way of services. Neither is a problem if you know it going in, and a mild annoyance if you do not.

Spring and fall are the seasons that suit the whole road. In midsummer the low country is hot enough that the drive becomes mostly a way to reach the cool of the high end, which is honestly a fine use of it.

Most people who land in the St. George area spend their weekends heading east, toward Zion and Sand Hollow and the parks on that side. Living at this end of the valley quietly reorients you, because the good road out of Santa Clara runs the other way, into open country with almost nobody on it. I have made that northwest turn on a summer evening more times than I can count.

The road shapes the town too. The historic core along the river is a genuinely different kind of neighborhood from the newer ground up on the benches, and the Pioneer Parkway corridor up top carries the everyday errands. Where you land on that map matters more here than in a city laid out on a grid.

For what is currently for sale on either side of the drive, start with homes for sale in Santa Clara, and the Santa Clara city guide explains how the town fits together.