The road west Veyo
The way everybody went before the highway went over the bench
The Gunlock road, west out of the crossroads.
One Washington County road leaves Veyo heading west, drops off the bench, follows the Santa Clara down to a town settled in 1857 and named for a gunsmith, and comes out on the old highway at Shivwits. It is paved, it is quiet, and it runs through country the Old Spanish Trail used. Here is the drive and what is on it.
Start here
One county road leaves this town, and it goes west.
Veyo has exactly one intersection that matters. SR-18 runs north and south through it, and a single Washington County road leaves it heading west, drops off the bench, and follows the Santa Clara River down to Gunlock. Carry on and the road passes the reservoir, reaches Shivwits, and meets the old highway that runs east to Santa Clara and St. George.
It is paved the whole way, two lanes, posted at 25 through the residential stretch of Veyo, and the county's own general plan says flatly that widening it beyond two lanes is not anticipated at any point in the foreseeable future. That is a genuinely nice thing to read about a road you are about to drive.
Roughly twelve to fifteen miles and twenty minutes gets you to Gunlock. The whole loop back to Veyo through Santa Clara and up SR-18 runs somewhere around fifty miles and takes an hour and a half without stopping, which makes it the best available afternoon in this part of the county.
The road, at a glance
1
county road out of Veyo
~12 to 15 mi
to Gunlock
1857
the year Gunlock was settled
~50 mi
for the full loop back up SR-18
Why this road exists at all
It was the way through long before anybody paved a bench.
This drainage is old ground for travel. The Old Spanish Trail, the pack route between Santa Fe and Los Angeles that ran roughly from 1829 to 1848, came through this corner of the territory and used the Santa Clara country on its way southwest. Congress designated it the fifteenth National Historic Trail in 2002. Veyo's oldest recorded subdivision, platted in 1973, is called Old Spanish Trails, and one of the town's streets carries the name too.
The settlers followed the same logic. A river in a desert is a road, and Gunlock is downstream of Veyo on it. For a long stretch of the twentieth century, before the highway was pushed over the Diamond Valley bench in its modern form, the way between this valley and the metro went by way of Gunlock and Shivwits rather than straight down the bench.
What replaced it is the highway. What survived is the road, and the road is better. The Santa Clara page covers the other half of this, the former US-91 alignment out of town past Frei's Market and the Shivwits lands, which is where you come out at the far end.
The road west out of Veyo is not Old Highway 91. The two get conflated constantly. Old Highway 91 is the former US-91, the Salt Lake to southern California main line, and it runs from St. George through Santa Clara out past Shivwits. The Veyo to Gunlock road is a Washington County road that meets it near Shivwits. They connect; they are not the same road.
Gunlock
Named for a gunsmith, and moved once by a river.
Gunlock was settled in 1857 by William Haynes Hamblin, a scout, prospector and gunsmith and a brother of Jacob Hamblin, whose 1863 home still stands and runs free tours down in Santa Clara. Hamblin's friends called him Gunlock Bill, apparently for the condition he kept his guns in and his accuracy with a rifle, and when George A. Smith visited the site later that year he simply named the place after him.
The town has moved once. Severe flooding on the Santa Clara in 1862, the same winter of rain that wrecked settlements up and down this river system, forced the community to relocate north to the site it occupies now. That is a recurring theme on this river and it is worth carrying in mind on any property near it anywhere in the county.
The modern chapter is the dam. Gunlock Reservoir and the state park around it both date from 1970, built for irrigation water and flood control, and the reservoir is now the reason most people from the metro drive out here at all.
| What Veyo has | What is further down the road | |
|---|---|---|
| The drive | The descent off the bench and the canyon reach | Open valley, then the reservoir |
| The town | The crossroads and the pool canyon | Gunlock, settled 1857, and a rodeo tradition |
| The water | The Santa Clara, in a gorge | Gunlock Reservoir, a state park since 1970 |
| Covered on | This page | The Ivins water guide and the Santa Clara old highway page |
The reservoir and the waterfalls that appear below it in some runoff years belong to the Ivins guide, which approaches them from that side. This page stops at the road.
The building on the hillside
A gas compressor station, and the power plant nobody expects.
On the west side of Veyo, on the hillside above this road, there is an industrial installation that residents noticed and did not like. The county's own general plan for Veyo records the complaint in writing: the natural gas company received permission to build a pressurisation station on the hillside, it is visible from the community, and the plan states that it should not have been approved in that location.
What has happened since is the interesting part. In May 2016 a power plant came online next to it. The Veyo Heat Recovery Project, built by Ormat at a cost of around $22.3 million, takes waste heat at roughly 700 degrees off three 15,000 horsepower turbines driving the gas compressors, runs it through an organic Rankine cycle and generates up to about 7.8 megawatts. It burns nothing. The fuel is exhaust that was previously going into the air.
The electricity goes to seven municipal power members, among them Santa Clara City and Washington City, both of them down the highway. So a pipeline runs past a community whose houses all heat with propane, and the waste heat from pushing gas through it lights streets in two towns twenty miles away. It is the single strangest fact about this valley and it is on a hillside most people drive past without a glance.
A gas line the town cannot connect to, powering a plant the town does not draw from, on a hillside the town said should never have been built on.
Driving it well
Clockwise from Veyo, and preferably not in a hurry.
Take it west out of Veyo rather than approaching from Santa Clara if you have the choice. Going this way you get the descent off the bench with the morning light behind you, the canyon reach in shade, the reservoir at the midpoint, and then the long climb back up SR-18 with the cinder cone standing in front of you for the last few miles. The other direction is the same road and a worse film.
Allow more time than the mileage suggests, not because the road is difficult but because there is nowhere sensible to hurry to. It is two lanes through ranch country with a river beside it, livestock on and near it, and gravel washed onto the bends after storms. Twenty five through the residential stretch of Veyo is enforced and deserved.
Fuel is the one real piece of planning. There is nothing between Veyo and the old highway: no shop, no pump, no cafe and no reliable signal. Fill up in town or in St. George, take water, and treat the fifty mile loop as an afternoon rather than an errand.
This is a working ranch road with a river beside it. Expect livestock on the road and near it, gravel washed onto the bends after summer storms, and no shoulder in places. Add the fact that the Santa Clara has a documented history of large winter floods, most recently and severely in 2005, and this is a corridor to check conditions on rather than assume.
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 canyon
Veyo Pool and Crawdad Canyon
A warm spring, a pool built by hand in 1927, and 234 bolted routes on the walls above it.
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 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 road, answered.
West at the only real intersection in Veyo, on the Washington County road signed for Gunlock. It is paved the whole way, two lanes, roughly 12 to 15 miles and about 20 minutes, dropping off the bench and following the Santa Clara River down. There are no services of any kind between the two communities.
Yes, the whole way, and the county's own general plan states that widening it beyond two lanes is not anticipated. It is posted at 25 miles an hour through the residential stretch of Veyo, where it runs past front yards, and opens up after that. Expect livestock near it and gravel on the bends after summer storms.
No, and the two are confused constantly. Old Highway 91 is the former US-91, the main line between Salt Lake City and southern California, running from St. George through Santa Clara and out past the Shivwits lands. The Veyo to Gunlock road is a separate Washington County road that meets it near Shivwits at its southern end.
William Haynes Hamblin, who settled the site in 1857. He was a scout, prospector, gunsmith and missionary, a brother of Jacob Hamblin whose 1863 home still stands in Santa Clara, and his friends called him Gunlock Bill for how well he kept his guns and how he shot. George A. Smith named the settlement after him during a visit later that year.
Flooding. Severe flooding on the Santa Clara River in 1862 forced the community to relocate north from its original site to the position it holds today. That winter of rain damaged settlements up and down this river system, and the Santa Clara has produced serious floods since, most recently and destructively in January 2005.
The dam and the state park around it both date from 1970. The reservoir was built for irrigation water and flood control on the Santa Clara. The reservoir itself, and the waterfalls that spill below the dam in the occasional strong runoff year, are covered from the Ivins side on the Ivins water guide rather than here.
Roughly fifty miles and about an hour and a half of driving without stops: west out of Veyo to Gunlock, on to the old highway at Shivwits, east through Santa Clara, then north up SR-18 and back to Veyo. Done in that direction you get the descent early and the climb back with the cinder cone in front of you.
A natural gas compressor station, and beside it a waste heat power plant. The Veyo Heat Recovery Project came online in May 2016, built by Ormat at a cost of about $22.3 million, capturing exhaust heat from three 15,000 horsepower turbines driving the compressors and generating up to about 7.8 megawatts for seven municipal power members including Santa Clara City and Washington City.
None. No fuel, no shop, no cafe and no reliable cell coverage through the canyon sections. Fill the tank and take water in Veyo or in St. George before you set off, and treat the loop as an afternoon out rather than something to fit around an errand.
The old road is still the better one.
It is also the road that explains why this valley developed the way it did, and why a parcel a mile west of the crossroads is a different proposition from one on the highway. If you are weighing ground out here, that is worth walking through.