The 7 best things to do in Kamas

Provo River Falls at about milepost 23.9 is a large signed pullout with a pit toilet and a half mile of path along a run of cascades, and it is the single best value stop on the road. Trial Lake and the Crystal Lake trailhead sit around mile 26. Mirror Lake itself is 31.5 miles out at about 10,400 feet with a 77-site campground with a horse loop. Any one of those turns a drive into a day.

Kamas is at about 6,500 feet and the pass is at 10,715, so a drive up the byway gains four thousand feet in under thirty miles. Afternoon thunderstorms build over the range through July and August, temperatures at the top run well below the valley, and anybody arriving from sea level will feel it. Go in the morning, carry more water than the distance suggests, and turn around when the sky changes.

Soda fountains disappeared from American pharmacies when the pharmacies were bought out. Hi-Mountain did not get bought out, and a town of 2,100 people that is fifteen minutes from the nearest chain has kept enough of its own trade to support an independent one. The counter is not a heritage exhibit; it is what happens when a business stays in one family in a town that stays small.

Main Street in Kamas is short and the useful stops sit on or near it: the drugstore and the fuel on Main, the grocery a block west on 200 South, and the ranger district office a block east on Center. A visitor doing the byway properly can park once, buy the recreation pass, eat, fill a cooler and be back on the road inside an hour. That is the whole downtown, and it is more than most towns this size still have.

A hotel and a batch of new homes are a large thing to add to a valley of a few thousand people, so the plan and how it would be paid for come up at nearly every public meeting in Kamas. None of that changes what a visitor does here today. If you want to follow the housing side of the valley rather than just ride it, the movers page covers it properly.

For now the honest reason to go is the riding and walking. The network sits on open bench with long views west toward the Wasatch Back and it dries out earlier in the spring than anything up the byway, which makes it the shoulder season option when the high country is still under snow. Check current access and etiquette signage on site, because a trail system inside a development can change its rules.

This is a seasonal business on a seasonal road. Summer hours run 9:00 to 5:00 from Memorial Day to Labor Day. In winter it drops to 10:00 to 4:00 and closes on Wednesdays, with Tuesdays added once the snow arrives. Anybody driving up on a February Tuesday for jerky and a coffee should check first, because the two and a half miles are not the problem, the door is.

The practical version is this: breakfast at the drugstore in town, the recreation pass from the ranger district office on Center Street, then the smokehouse for lunch supplies on the way past, and you are provisioned for anything from Provo River Falls to Mirror Lake. There is nothing else to buy east of here until the far end of the road, so the stop is not merely pleasant, it is the sensible one.

The Kamas Valley is still working ranch country, and the rodeo is a competitive sport in it rather than a heritage display. Ninety one years of continuity, PRCA sanctioning and a slot over the Fourth of July put Oakley on the circuit for genuine contenders, which is why the standard is what it is. The valley's second rodeo, at Fiesta Days in Kamas three weeks later, is the community version of the same thing.

Popular nights sell in advance and the 4th of July performance is the one that goes first. The drive back to Kamas afterwards is five miles on SR-32 with several thousand other people leaving at once, so expect a slow twenty minutes rather than a quick nine. Anybody staying in Park City should add the SR-248 leg on top of that.

Francis, Oakley, Marion, Peoa, Samak and Woodland all sit inside South Summit School District, whose headquarters and all three schools are in Kamas. Francis and Oakley are incorporated cities in their own right; the others are places rather than governments. The practical version for anyone house hunting is that the valley functions as one community with several addresses, and the addresses have different rulebooks.

The lakes at the top of the byway, the winter country above the gate and the two rivers that rise behind the town each have their own page here on The Local, because none of them fits in a ranked entry. Skiing belongs to Park City and is covered on the Park City skiing page. Jordanelle, Deer Creek and the Middle Provo below the dam belong to Heber City.