Bryce Canyon National Park United States

Legendary

Explore the colorful rock structures called hoodoos formed from weathering and erosion.

Photo by Jeff Hollett

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Bryce Canyon isn't actually a canyon at all. It's a huge natural amphitheater filled with thousands of tall, thin rock spires called hoodoos, carved slowly by ice, wind, and water over millions of years.

Long before it became a national park, the area was home to Ancestral Puebloan and Paiute peoples. The Paiute believed the hoodoos were once living creatures, turned to stone by a trickster spirit named Coyote.

Mormon scouts first explored the region in the 1850s, sent to check if the land was good for farming and raising animals. Small groups of Mormon pioneers later settled nearby along the Paria River.

One of those settlers was a man named Ebenezer Bryce. He built a home below the rock formations in the 1870s, and the canyon eventually took on his name.

As more visitors and settlers arrived, overgrazing and logging started damaging the delicate rock formations. Conservationists pushed hard to get the area protected before more harm was done.

On June 8, 1923, President Warren G. Harding declared the area Bryce Canyon National Monument. Just five years later, in 1928, Congress upgraded it to full national park status.

The park sits at a much higher elevation than nearby Zion National Park, with its rim reaching between 8,000 and 9,000 feet. That height gives Bryce Canyon cooler temperatures and a completely different feel from its desert neighbors.

Walk the Navajo Loop Trail down into the amphitheater for an up-close look at the hoodoos. Watch the sunrise from Sunrise Point, when the rocks glow bright orange and pink. Stay after dark, since Bryce Canyon is one of the best stargazing spots in the entire National Park System.