What is up on Land Hill
Off Old Highway 91 · About 3.5 miles round trip · Free
Land Hill is the mesa above the Santa Clara River southwest of town, and the trail across it is the Tempi'po'op Trail, sometimes signed or referenced as the Anasazi Valley route. It runs roughly three and a half miles round trip over ground that most reasonably fit people can handle without any technical skill.
What is up there is extensive. Not one panel with a couple of figures on it, but panel after panel of Ancestral Puebloan rock art across the boulders and the rim, plus the remains of a farmstead site roughly a thousand years old. This was a place people lived, farmed, and marked, not a place they passed through.
The scale of it is what surprises visitors. Most towns would build a visitor center and a gift shop around a fraction of this. Here it sits in the open at the end of a dirt pullout, ten minutes from a grocery store.
Most towns would build a visitor center around a fraction of this. Here it sits in the open at the end of a dirt pullout, ten minutes from a grocery store.
The trail itself
Trailhead off Old Highway 91 · Exposed · No services
The route leaves Old Highway 91 south of town and climbs onto the mesa, then follows the rim. The climb is short, the rest is rolling, and the surface is desert: sand, rock, and loose stuff on the way up. Trail runners will find it easy. Anyone in street shoes will not enjoy the descent.
There is no shade worth the name, no water, and no facilities. That is the whole safety briefing, and it is the reason this is a cool season and early morning trail rather than an anytime one.
Give yourself more time than the distance suggests. The panels are the point, and rushing past them to make a mileage number is the one mistake nearly everyone makes on a first visit.
How to visit without wrecking it
Look, photograph, leave · Never touch a panel
This part matters more than anything else on the page. Rock art is fragile in ways that are not obvious. The oils on your hands transfer to the surface and accelerate its breakdown, chalk and water make panels photograph better and damage them permanently, and a foothold scuffed into soft rock does not grow back.
So: do not touch the panels, do not chalk or wet them, do not climb on or above them, and keep pets and bikes off the rock. Stay on the established route. If you find something that looks undocumented, photograph it where you stand and leave it exactly as it is.
If you see damage happening or fresh vandalism, report it to the land managers rather than confronting anyone. These sites are protected by federal law, and the people who look after them would rather hear about it late than never.
Never touch, chalk, wet, or climb on a rock art panel. Skin oils and moisture accelerate damage that cannot be undone, and marks on the rock are permanent. Stay on the established route, keep bikes and pets off the panels, photograph from where you stand, and report vandalism to the land managers rather than confronting anyone.
When to go
October through April · Early morning · Low light is better
The season here runs opposite to most of the country. October through April is the comfortable window, and even inside it the mornings are better than the middle of the day. From June through early September, the honest advice is sunrise or skip it, because there is no shade on that mesa and summer afternoons in this valley commonly run into the low hundreds.
There is a second reason to go early or late that has nothing to do with heat. Low, raking light brings the panels out. In flat midday sun a lot of them simply disappear into the rock, and people walk right past figures they would have seen at nine in the morning.
Winter is genuinely good here. Highs in the fifties, empty trail, and the light angle is low all day. Bring a layer for the first hour and you will have the mesa to yourself.
What else is out there
The river reserve · The old highway · The town below
Land Hill sits at the edge of the same country as the Santa Clara River Reserve, the BLM mesa and river bottom that gives this town its trail system. The reserve's mountain bike trails, Barrel Roll and the rest, run out of the Cove Wash trailhead off Santa Clara Drive, so the two are close cousins rather than the same trip.
The road you drove in on is worth its own afternoon. Old Highway 91 was the main line to Las Vegas before the interstate, and it still runs northwest past the Shivwits lands to Gunlock and the SR-18 country. That is on the Old Highway 91 guide.
And the town below has its own thousand year gap to fill: the 1863 Hamblin Home and Heritage Square carry the pioneer end of the same valley's story, with free tours every day.
What it means if you live here
Santa Clara, year round · The resident view
Visitors do this trail once and talk about it for a year. Residents do it in the morning before work in February, which is a strange and good thing to be able to say about your commute.
It is also part of a bigger pattern worth understanding before you buy here. Santa Clara is hemmed in by Ivins, St. George, and protected federal land along the river, so the open country at the edge of town is not waiting to become a subdivision. That is a large part of why a nearly built out town of about 8,600 people still feels like it has room around it.
The trade is inventory. Few homes turn over in a settled town, and the right one is worth waiting a season for. If you want to see what is available now, start with homes for sale in Santa Clara.
Three notes before you walk
- Hands off, always. Touching, chalking, or wetting a panel causes damage that cannot be undone, and it is the single fastest way to lose a site like this.
- Go early, in a cool month. There is no shade up there, and low light is what makes the panels readable in the first place.
- Bring more water than the distance suggests. Three and a half miles in the open desert is not the same three and a half miles you walk at home.
