Utah Highway Facts and Fancy

                Highest paved road point in Utah, Bald Mountain summit.

OVERALL, Utah's highways provide a pleasant contrast of geography for sightseers, with paved and unpaved roads traversing some of the nation's most spectacular scenery.

Besides U-143 being Utah's steepest paved road with a 13 percent grade, the following tidbits about other Utah highways have been gathered from Utah maps, the Utah Department of Transportation and other sources:

·         Highest paved road in Utah — Mirror Lake Highway (U-150), which crosses Bald Mountain pass, 10,759 feet above sea level. The road is usually open June to early November, depending on the weather. Its latest-ever opening was June 29, 1995.

·         Highest paved road along the Wasatch Front — The Mount Nebo loop road that reaches 9,353 feet above sea level at the Monument trailhead.

·         Highest gravel road in Utah —From Big John Flat to a high ridge in the Tushar Mountains, between Beaver and Marysvale, at 11,500 feet above sea level.

·         Highest gravel road along the Wasatch Front — Skyline Drive in Davis County between Farmington and Bountiful. A spur road that heads north to the Francis Peak radar domes above Fruit Heights tops out at almost 9,500 feet above sea level. The road is passable by cars in the summer.

·         Lowest elevation paved road — River Road in Washington County south of Bloomington Hills and St. George at 2,697 feet above sea level.

·         Lowest elevation unpaved road — Several jeep roads in the Beaver Dam Wash area, west of St. George, that approach 2,500 feet in elevation.

·         First Utah roads to be hard-surfaced — Richards Street, in downtown Salt Lake City, from South Temple to 100 South and also State Street, from South Temple to 400 South — both in 1891 and probably paved with a combination of granite blocks, asphalt and brick. Main Street, in Salt Lake City — from South Temple to 300 South, was the next street paved.

·         Longest straight stretch of road — I-80 on the Salt Flats between Wendover and Knolls with an approximately 50-mile straightaway.

·         Longest tunnel — Zion-Mount Carmel Tunnel (U-9), 5,613-feet long, the nation's fifth-longest land tunnel. It opened in 1930 and is in Zion National Park.

·         Worst paved road test for acrophobiacs — Probably U-12, between Escalante and Boulder, where the highway traverses a knife-edge with high cliffs on both sides of the roadway and no guardrails.

-By Lynn Arave and first published in the Deseret News, May 26, 2000.