The cone Veyo
One eruption, a long time ago, and then nothing ever again
The Veyo Volcano, and the ground it made.
A cinder cone standing over the highway a mile and a half south of town, walkable in about ninety minutes from a pullout on SR-18 with no trail at all. Here is the route, the geology of a mountain that gets one eruption and no more, and what fractured basalt means once you are buying ground on top of it.
Start here
A cinder cone with a highway running past its foot.
About a mile and a half south of the Veyo crossroads, SR-18 skirts the base of a cinder cone. There is a large pullout on the east side of the road, a gate just north of it that is not locked, and beyond the gate no trail whatsoever. You pick the east ridge, which is the gentler skyline, and walk up about six hundred feet of loose black cinder to a flat top somewhere around 5,239 feet with a survey benchmark set into it.
It is roughly a mile each way and most people are back at the car inside ninety minutes. The lack of a trail sounds more serious than it is: the cone is a simple shape, there is nothing to get lost behind, and the summit is visible from the parking spot the entire time.
What makes it worth doing rather than photographing from the road is the surface. A good deal of what is underfoot is pumice, light enough to float in water, and the whole slope rings slightly hollow. You are walking up a pile of material that came out of the ground here and landed where it stopped.
The volcano, at a glance
~5,239 ft
at the summit benchmark
~600 ft
of gain from the highway
~1 mile
each way, no trail
Once
the number of times a cinder cone erupts
What actually happened here
One eruption, and then the mountain was finished forever.
Cinder cones are monogenetic, which is a technical way of saying they get one go. Magma finds a path to the surface, throws fragmented rock into the air for a period, builds a cone out of what falls back around the vent, and stops. The next eruption in the same volcanic field opens a new vent somewhere else and builds a new cone. Nothing about the hill above Veyo is dormant, because there is nothing left in it to be dormant.
The cone belongs to a broader field of basaltic volcanism scattered across this corner of Washington County, and the most spectacular product of that field is not this hill at all. It is the Santa Clara flow, the black river of lava that runs down Snow Canyon and which the Utah Geological Survey dated by finding a charred woody branch in sand underneath it. The radiocarbon result came back at 27,270 years before present, give or take 250. An attempt to date the lava itself by argon failed, and the reason it failed is the interesting part: the flow was too young to have accumulated enough of the daughter isotope to measure.
Published ages for the Veyo cone specifically vary between sources by a wide margin, so this page will not put a single number on it. What is not in dispute is the sequence: this is old ground by human standards, young ground by geological ones, and finished either way.
| The Veyo cone | The Santa Clara flow in Snow Canyon | |
|---|---|---|
| What it is | A cinder cone built around one vent | A lava flow that ran down a canyon |
| Dated | Published ages vary; treat with caution | 27,270 years before present, by radiocarbon |
| How it was dated | Not settled in the popular sources | A charred branch in sand beneath the lava |
| Where to see it | From the SR-18 pullout south of Veyo | Snow Canyon State Park, from the Ivins side |
The flow and its trails belong to Snow Canyon State Park and are covered from the Ivins side. What Veyo has is the cone beside the highway and the ground it made.
The walk itself
Pick the east ridge, and expect the way down to be the hard part.
From the pullout, go through the gate and aim for the ridge running up the left hand skyline as you look at the cone. That is the east ridge and it is the least steep way onto the rim. The north face is more direct and considerably worse underfoot, and there is a bumpy dirt road that reaches the north side if you would rather drive part of it, but the standard version is the walk from the highway.
The summit is genuinely flat, with rocks and a benchmark that are easy to find. Standing on it you get the Pine Valley Mountains to the northeast, the Bull Valley country away west, the highway threading past underneath and, south, the ground falling away toward the lava country and the red rock. It is a large view for an hour of effort.
The descent surprises people. Six hundred feet of loose cinder gives way underfoot on the way down in a manner it does not on the way up, and most people find their knees complain more than their lungs did. Take it in a diagonal rather than straight down the fall line and it is fine.
A black slope with no shade behaves like a radiator. This is a short walk that turns unpleasant fast in summer. The surface absorbs heat, there is no cover anywhere on the cone, and there is no water at the pullout or on the hill. From May to September do it in the first hour of daylight or do not do it, and carry far more water than a mile of walking would normally suggest.
What black ground means once you own some
The rock under Veyo is the reason the rules here are what they are.
The cone is a curiosity. The flow it belongs to is a property matter. The ground under most of this valley is fractured volcanic basalt, and fractured basalt is extremely permeable, which is the single most consequential geological fact about buying here.
Every home and business in Veyo is on a septic system, because there is no municipal sewer and no city to build one. Permeable ground moves whatever a septic system releases faster and further than clay would, so Washington County takes an interest in how many systems sit on an acre and a soil and percolation evaluation is a real gate on raw land rather than a formality. It is entirely normal, and it is the sort of thing a buyer arriving from a metro has never had to think about.
The same rock is why there is a cinder pit near the cone and why the county plan identifies cinders and rock products as the valley's industry. It is also why the canyon behind town has 85 foot basalt walls worth bolting. One eruption, and the whole place has been arranging itself around the result ever since. The mover page takes the practical half of this properly.
A cinder cone is a good afternoon. The flow underneath it is a line item in every land purchase in this valley.
Access, and keeping it
One gate, and the only thing anybody asks of you.
The walk crosses working ground. The gate exists to keep livestock where they belong, and it is unlocked because somebody has decided that people walking up the hill are not a problem. That arrangement lasts exactly as long as visitors keep closing it.
Beyond the gate the usual applies and is worth stating anyway: take nothing off the hill, leave no rubbish, keep dogs under control and away from stock, and do not drive anything up the slope. The cone is not a park, there is no ranger, and there is nobody to complain to if it stops being available.
Because the valley here is almost entirely private ground, unusually so for a small community in this county, the informal access that makes places like this walkable is worth more than it would be somewhere ringed by federal land. Treat it as a courtesy rather than a right and it stays a courtesy that continues.
Close the gate behind you, both ways. That single habit is the difference between an access that stays open and one that quietly ends. It is the only thing anybody in this valley would ask of a visitor walking up the cone, and it costs ten seconds.
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 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 volcano, answered.
Yes. There is a large pullout on the east side of SR-18 about a mile and a half south of the Veyo crossroads, and an unlocked gate just north of it. From there it is roughly a mile and 600 feet of gain to a flat summit near 5,239 feet. There is no trail, so you pick the east ridge and walk up. Allow about ninety minutes for the round trip.
No, and it cannot become active. It is a cinder cone, and cinder cones are monogenetic, meaning they are built by a single eruption and then finished permanently. A later eruption in the same volcanic field would open a new vent elsewhere and build a new cone rather than reuse this one.
Published ages vary widely between sources, so it is worth being cautious with any single figure. What is firmly dated nearby is the Santa Clara lava flow that runs down Snow Canyon, which the Utah Geological Survey put at 27,270 years before present, plus or minus 250, using a charred branch found in sand beneath the lava. An attempt to date the flow directly by argon failed because it was too young.
The walk from the highway pullout crosses working ground through a gate that is not locked, and the valley around Veyo is unusually private for a small community in this county. Treat access as a courtesy rather than a right: close the gate behind you both ways, take nothing, leave nothing and keep away from livestock.
Short and steep rather than long. About a mile each way with 600 feet of climbing, on loose volcanic cinder with no trail and no shade. Most people find the descent harder than the climb because the surface gives way underfoot. It is well within reach of anybody in reasonable health, in the right shoes and at the right time of day.
Basaltic lava from the same volcanic field the cone belongs to, weathered and fractured. It is why the canyon behind town has 85 foot black walls worth bolting for climbing, why there is a cinder pit near the cone, and why the county's own plan identifies cinders and rock products as the valley's industry.
Because fractured basalt is highly permeable. There is no municipal sewer in Veyo, so every home and business runs a septic system, and permeable ground moves what a system releases further and faster than clay does. Washington County therefore takes an interest in septic density per acre, and a soil and percolation evaluation is a genuine gate on raw land here.
No. There is no constructed trail, no signage and no marked route. The cone is a simple enough shape that this is not a navigation problem, since the summit is in sight from the pullout the whole way, but it does mean loose ground the entire climb and no maintained tread to follow on the way back down.
The Pine Valley Mountains to the northeast, the Bull Valley country west, SR-18 threading past below, and the ground dropping away south toward the lava country and the red rock. The summit is flat, with rocks and a survey benchmark on it, so it is a comfortable place to sit for a while.
An hour up a volcano, and a valley arranged around what it left.
The cone is the fun part. The flow underneath it decides septic design, lot density and what a piece of raw ground here is actually worth. If you are looking at land in this valley, that is where I would start.