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.
By Scott Buehler, Veyo local
Updated September 2026
The short answer
The Gunlock road leaves Veyo at its one real intersection, heads west, drops off the bench, and follows the Santa Clara River down to Gunlock and Gunlock Reservoir. It is a paved two lane county road, a short drive of under twenty minutes, and there are no services on it, so you fuel up in Veyo or St. George first. Most people carry on past the reservoir to the old highway at Shivwits and loop back through Santa Clara, which is roughly a fifty mile afternoon and the best drive in this corner of the county.
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 from 1829 to 1848, came through this corner of the territory and used the Santa Clara country on its way southwest. Congress made it the fifteenth National Historic Trail in 2002. Veyo carries the name still: one of the older recorded subdivisions is called Old Spanish Trails, and a town street uses it too.
The settlers followed the same logic. A river in a desert is a road, and Gunlock sits downstream of Veyo on it. For a long stretch of the twentieth century, before the modern highway was pushed over the Diamond Valley bench, the way between this valley and St. George 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 far end of it is the former US-91 out of Santa Clara, past Frei's Market and the Shivwits lands, which is where you come back out.
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. He was known as Gunlock for how well he kept his guns and how he shot, and when George A. Smith came through 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, forced the community to relocate north to the site it holds now. Flooding is a recurring theme on this river, and it is worth keeping in mind about any ground 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 to hold irrigation water and control floods on the Santa Clara. The reservoir covers about 266 acres, sits roughly 15 miles northwest of St. George, and is the reason most people from town make this drive at all.
Gunlock State Park and Reservoir
On the Santa Clara, southwest of Veyo · State park day use fee · Directions
The reservoir is the draw the rest of the year, for a paddle or a line in the water. What makes Gunlock briefly famous is the waterfalls, and they are the fact I most want to get right for you. In a high water spring, when a strong snowpack melts fast and the reservoir fills past the dam, water pours over the top and runs down the red slickrock below it as dozens of temporary falls. It is a genuinely rare thing: it has happened only a handful of times in the past few decades. It is not scheduled, it is never guaranteed, and it can be gone in days. Check the state park's conditions before you drive out for the falls specifically, and treat the reservoir itself as the reason to go on any ordinary day.
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 the community objected to. Its own general plan says as much: the natural gas company got permission to build a compressor station on the hillside, it is visible from the valley, and the plan records that it should not have been approved there.
What happened next is the interesting part. In May 2016 a power plant came online beside it. The Veyo Heat Recovery Project, built by Ormat for about $22.3 million, takes the waste heat off the three gas turbines that drive the compressors, runs it through an organic Rankine cycle, and generates up to about 7.8 megawatts. It burns nothing. The fuel is exhaust that used to go straight into the air.
The electricity goes to seven municipal power members, among them Santa Clara City and Washington City, both down the highway. So a gas line runs past a crossroads that heats with propane, and the waste heat from pushing gas through it helps light streets in two towns twenty miles away. It is the single strangest fact about this valley, and it sits 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.
| Leg of the loop | Roughly | Drive time |
|---|---|---|
| Veyo down to Gunlock and its reservoir | About 10 miles | Under 20 minutes |
| St. George back up to Veyo on SR-18 | About 18 to 19 miles | About 25 minutes |
| The full Veyo, Gunlock and Santa Clara loop | About 50 miles | About 90 minutes |
Distances are approximate. There are no services on the loop between Veyo and the old highway, and cell coverage thins through the canyon.
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.
Scott Buehler
Moving Utah About Scott
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Read thisQuick answers
The road, answered.
It is a short drive, under twenty minutes, on a paved two lane county road that leaves Veyo heading west and follows the Santa Clara River down. There are no services of any kind between the two, so fuel up in Veyo or St. George first.
Yes, the whole way, two lanes. It is posted at 25 through the residential stretch of Veyo, where it runs past front yards, then opens up. Expect livestock near it and gravel washed onto the bends after summer storms.
The descent off the bench, the Santa Clara canyon, and Gunlock Reservoir at Gunlock State Park, which is the reason most people from St. George make the drive. In rare high water springs, water spills over the dam and runs down the red slickrock as temporary waterfalls.
No. The falls only appear when the reservoir fills past the dam after a strong snowpack and a fast spring melt, which has happened only a handful of times in the past few decades. They are a short, weather dependent spring event, never a scheduled attraction, so check conditions before you drive out for them.
No, and the two get confused constantly. Old Highway 91 is the former US-91, the Salt Lake to southern California main line, running from St. George through Santa Clara out past the Shivwits lands. The Veyo to Gunlock road is a separate Washington County road that meets it near Shivwits.
William Haynes Hamblin, who settled the site in 1857. He was a scout, prospector and gunsmith, a brother of Jacob Hamblin whose 1863 home still stands in Santa Clara, and he was known as Gunlock for how well he kept and shot his guns. George A. Smith named the settlement after him later that year.
Flooding. Severe flooding on the Santa Clara River in 1862 forced the community to relocate north from its original site to where it sits today. 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 holds back the Santa Clara for irrigation water and flood control, covers about 266 acres, and sits roughly 15 miles northwest of St. George.
Roughly fifty miles and about an hour and a half without stops: west out of Veyo to Gunlock, on to the old highway at Shivwits, east through Santa Clara, then north up SR-18 back to Veyo. Driven that way you get the descent early and the climb back with the cinder cone in front of you.
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.
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