A long Nine Mile Road

The lady at the Moab tourist office is quite knowledgeable and when I asked her to suggest some spots to visit on our return trip to Park City, she suggested that we took the “Nine Mile Road” near Price, Utah. 

The Nine Mile Canyon is a natural conduit through the Book Cliffs shale and sandstone escarpment that stretches 200 miles from Price Canyon into neighboring Colorado to their north side. The Book Cliffs are a massive formation. 

It forms a backdrop to the corridor from Helper, Price and Wellington and on down to Green River and that particular canyon is famous for its well-preserved and abundant collection of prehistoric petroglyphs, constituting a “drive-in” art gallery of sort.

These were the work of the Fremont, whose presence in Nine Mile Canyon goes back from AD 950 to 1250. The “Nine Mile” name is a misnomer in the sense that it stretches up to more than 46 miles long. We did it all, stopping at each marked point of interest, took plenty of pictures and we in awe at the scenery. 

We then took a dusty and steep 6 mile dirt road due north toward Myton, preceding a nice pave road after clearing the pass, into the Uinta plateau and its multitude of active oil wells and returned home via Duchesne on Route 40.