The canyon Veyo
A hole in a lava flow that a family spent three years building
Veyo Pool and Crawdad Canyon.
A warm spring in a black basalt gorge, a pool one family built by hand and opened at fifteen cents, and 234 bolted climbing routes on the walls above it. One day pass covers all of it, and the two halves run on completely different seasons. Here is what to know before you drive up.
Start here
A warm spring in a black canyon, and a family with three years to spare.
Behind the highway at Veyo, the Santa Clara River has cut a gorge into the old lava flow the town sits on. Locals call it Crawdad Canyon, for the obvious reason. Somewhere in the bottom of it, on ground the Cottam family had homesteaded, they found a warm spring coming out of the black rock.
What they did next is the whole story. They built a pool. Not a contractor, not an engineer, not a bond issue: a family, working the rock themselves, for three years. About eighteen months after it was finished they opened it to the public at fifteen cents a head, and over the years they enlarged it twice to its present 28 by 70 feet.
For decades afterwards this was the only public swimming pool in Washington County. Every other pool in the region postdates it, and a large share of the people who grew up in St. George before the 1980s learned to swim in a hole in the ground twenty miles up a highway. That is why a community of 586 people has a name the whole state recognises.
The canyon, at a glance
1927
the first pool finished
28 x 70 ft
the pool at its present size
234
bolted routes on the walls above it
~12 deg
cooler than the St. George valley
What happened in 1995
Somebody looked up at the walls and saw two hundred routes.
For most of the pool's life the canyon above the water was just the canyon. Jim and Susan Bosse bought the property in 1995, looked at the basalt, and began bolting it. What came out of that is 234 sport routes from 5.6 to 5.13 on solid rock up to about 85 feet, developed over years and run as a private outdoor climbing park, which is a rare enough arrangement in the United States that climbers travel for it.
The detail that gives the place away is the plaques. Every route has a small brass plate at its base carrying the route name, the grade and the name of the climber who made the first ascent. Outdoor crags do not normally come with signage; you work the guidebook and count bolts from a tree. Here the wall introduces itself.
The trade for that is that it is somebody's property. There is an entrance fee, a waiver, a sign in at the desk, and a rule about animals. There is also no gear on site to rent or buy and no guiding service, so everything you climb on arrives in your own car.
| The pool | The climbing park | |
|---|---|---|
| Season | Roughly April to the end of October | Year round |
| Access outside season | Closed | By reservation, arranged ahead |
| What you bring | A towel | Rope, draws, harness, shoes, all of it |
| Best months | June to September | Spring and autumn |
| Ticket | The all access day pass | The same all access day pass |
One gate, one pass, two completely different seasons. This is the single most useful thing to understand about the place before planning a trip around it.
Outside the summer season the canyon runs by arrangement, not by turning up. The pool closes at the end of October and the climbing park does not, but the gate is not simply open through the winter. Contact the resort ahead to arrange access rather than driving up and finding nobody at the desk.
What a day here actually looks like
A pool, a creek, a grill and a wall, at one address.
The unusual thing about the canyon is not any one feature, it is that a single day pass covers a set of activities that normally require three destinations. Somebody swims. Somebody else climbs. A third person spends the entire visit crouched over the creek catching crawdads, which is an organised activity here with supplies provided rather than a thing children improvise. Pickleball, volleyball and basketball courts sit off to the side, and there is a grill on the property so lunch does not require leaving.
There is lodging too, which surprises people: camping along the river, room for recreational vehicles, and a remodelled farmhouse on the property. That turns a hot afternoon into a weekend without a drive back down the highway in the dark.
The one thing to plan around is the crowd. On a July Saturday the pool traffic from St. George and the highway traffic through town arrive at the same time, and the parking lot is the busiest thing in Veyo. A weekday, or the first hour after opening, is a materially different visit.
One gate, one pass, and three people in the same car having entirely different days. There are not many places set up that way.
The spring, and what it is not
Warm, spring fed, and not a hot spring resort.
The water here is spring fed and it comes out of the lava warmer than the river does, which is what made a pool possible in a canyon at 4,400 feet in the first place. It is worth being precise about what that means, because the vocabulary gets stretched. This is a swimming pool fed by a natural source, not a soaking resort, and nobody should arrive expecting the 107 degree water that comes out of the ground down at La Verkin.
The federal stream gauges on this reach of the Santa Clara are named above and below Veyo Hot Springs, which tells you the geothermal signature here has been on the maps a long time. What the visitor experiences is simply a pool that does not shock you on a May morning.
Because the source is natural and the setting is a canyon, the operators have renovated the pool itself in recent years, along with the locker rooms, the parking and the camping. It is an old place that has had money spent on it, rather than an old place that has been left alone.
This is a canyon with moving water in the bottom of it. The creek carries a real current in spring runoff and after summer storms upstream, the basalt is slick where it is wet, and the walls above the water are steep. Watch children near the creek and near the rim, and treat the canyon the way you would treat any other flowing water in Southern Utah in monsoon season.
Planning a visit
The five things worth settling before you leave the house.
First, the season and the hours, direct from the resort. The pool runs roughly April through October, opens mid morning, and runs later on Friday and Saturday evenings in high summer than it does in April. Every one of those details has moved over the years and none of it is worth taking from a third party listing.
Second, the pass. One all access day pass per person covers everything in the canyon, and discounted punch passes exist for anybody expecting to come back. Third, the waiver: everybody signs one, and anybody under 18 needs a parent or guardian present to sign it, which catches out families arriving with a friend's child in the car.
Fourth, the animals rule, which is absolute apart from service animals. Fifth, footwear, because there is a creek in the bottom of this and the rock is not kind to bare feet. After that it is a canyon with a pool in it, four minutes off the highway bridge and about twenty two minutes from the north end of St. George.
| Weekday morning | Summer Saturday | |
|---|---|---|
| Parking | Straightforward | Full by the middle of the day |
| The pool | Room to swim | Busy, and loud |
| The wall | Quiet | Popular routes have a queue |
| Best for | Climbing, and anybody who wants quiet | A family day, if you arrive at opening |
The canyon is twenty odd minutes from a metro of nearly a hundred thousand people. On a hot Saturday that arithmetic shows up in the parking lot.
Keep reading
More of Veyo on The Local.
Things to do
The top 8, ranked
Eight picks, ranked, from a pool in a lava canyon to a cinder cone with a gate at the bottom.
Read the guideThe cone
The Veyo Volcano
A mile and 600 feet up a cinder cone, and what black ground means once you own some.
Read the guideThe crossing
The arch bridge
One crossing of the Santa Clara, and the inspection that put it on a 30 ton limit.
Read the guideThe road west
The Gunlock road
The county road west, the descent to the river, and a town named for a gunsmith.
Read the guideMoving here
A share of the water
Water is a share in a company here, and that one fact explains the whole valley.
Read the guideThe companion
Veyo, from a local
The pool, the cone, the bridge and the road west, in one place.
Read the pageQuick answers
The canyon, answered.
It is a spring fed pool rather than a hot spring resort. The source comes out of the lava warmer than the river does, which is what made a pool possible here, but this is a swimming pool with a natural feed, not a soaking pool. The federal stream gauges on this reach of the Santa Clara carry the Veyo Hot Springs name, so the geothermal signature is real and long recorded.
The first pool dates to 1927. The Cottam family had homesteaded the ground, found a warm spring coming out of the black lava canyon, and spent three years building a family pool. About eighteen months later they opened it to the public at fifteen cents. It was enlarged over the years to its present 28 by 70 feet and was for a long time the only public swimming pool in Washington County.
It is the Santa Clara River gorge at Veyo, cut into an old basalt flow, and it is where the pool sits. The name comes from the crawdads in the creek, which visitors catch with supplies provided on site. The same gorge runs under the SR-18 arch bridge a short way downstream.
234 bolted routes, from 5.6 to 5.13, on solid basalt walls up to about 85 feet. Each one has a small brass plaque at its base giving the route name, its grade and the climber who made the first ascent. The routes were developed after the property changed hands in 1995 and the canyon runs as a private outdoor climbing park.
Yes, all of it. There is no equipment on the property to rent or to buy, and no guiding service. Climbers pay the day pass, sign the waiver, sign in at the front desk and walk in with everything they intend to use. Anyone new to outdoor sport climbing should come with somebody experienced rather than learn here.
The pool runs a season, generally from around the start of April to the end of October, opening mid morning and running later on Friday and Saturday evenings in high summer than in the shoulder months. The climbing park stays open year round but by reservation outside the pool season. Confirm current dates, hours and rates with the resort before driving up.
Entry is a single all access day pass per person that covers the pool, the climbing park, the creek, the courts and the picnic ground, with discounted punch passes available for repeat visits. The rate has moved over the years, so check the current price with the resort rather than an older listing.
No. Animals are not permitted anywhere in the canyon, with the only exception being service animals under the Americans with Disabilities Act. This catches out a lot of visitors who assume an outdoor property in a rural community will be relaxed about it, so plan for the dog before you leave home.
Yes. The property offers camping along the Santa Clara River, room for recreational vehicles, and a remodelled historic farmhouse, alongside the day use. That makes a weekend possible without driving back down SR-18 to St. George in the dark. Confirm availability and current rates directly with the resort.
The canyon is the reason people know this town's name.
It is also the reason a lot of people first drive up SR-18 and start wondering what living up here would cost. If that is where you have landed, the water and the ground are the first two questions and I am happy to work through them with you.