Escalante Petrified Forest State Park — Attraction in Four Corners States

In 1872, a member of John Wesley Powell’s survey party, Almon Harris Thompson, first explored the Escalante River. He decided to name the area after an explorer named Escalante, which means to escalate upward, like stairsteps, which describes the plateaus surrounding the park. In 1954, Wide Hollow Reservoir was constructed to provide irrigation for the town of Escalante. The reservoir is stocked with rainbow trout and bluegill, and is popular for water sports. A visitor center was built in 1991, and features petrified wood, petrified dinosaur bones, ammonite, and shell fossils. Visitors will enjoy several trails, which wind throughout the park. The Petrified Forest Trail is a one-mile loop, winding through lava flows and thousands of pieces of petrified wood. The Sleeping Rainbows trail is an optional .75-mile loop off the Petrified Forest Trail. This section is much steeper and requires scrambling and climbing over rocks. In the fall of 2014 the added a 50 ft petrified tree. The entire tree can be viewed from it’s roots to the tip. it is accessible to all visitors. Opened to the public as a state park in 1976. Park Elevation: 5,900 feet! The staff was great and has wonderful facilities. The hiking trails are well marked and maintained. The forest is very cool to see. Petrified Forest & Trail of Sleeping Rainbows Trails. Escalante Petrified Forest State Park, Escalante Utah. Like, follow & share if you like. Jeff Mullins Photography Adventures. Get Your Hike On!😎 Consider liking my pictures and...

We recently stayed at Escalante Petrified Forest State Park for several days. We were in our 29-foot travel trailer. This was a great campground to stay at. The bathrooms were clean, and the showers were wonderful. We hiked the trail and looked out at the lake, which was beautiful, and my husband had great luck fishing in the morning and evening, though he didn't keep anything.

We were in spot 21 right by the visitor's center and boat dock. That site had both water and electricity. The spot itself is not a pull through or a back-in site. You need to be able to fit your trailer on the side of the campground road so other people can get by. That was the only part we were surprised by. If you have a smaller rig, this will be fine, but I can imagine someone with a big rig situation may not fit.

This was a great campground. We selected the spot we did because from photos, it looked to be shaded, which it is, but not fully. If we stayed here again, we would choose a spot in the newer section, which doesn't have much shade because that area was much quieter. Spot 21 is pretty noisy because it is right across from the boat dock, and all the families play there:) There is a $15 dump fee at this campground on top of your camp fee.

The staff were all wonderful!

I highly recommend this campground and hope we get to...

We camped two nights in late April. The campground was full, but it's awfully small. We loved our site nine which is on the backside up against the Canyon wall. It was quiet scenic and private. The bathroom is amazingly clean and modern. The showers were just fine. We felt sorry for the people that were closer to the lake, because there's a lot of construction going on right now. They start early about 7:30 AM and the noise of the trucks and the guys yelling back-and-forth will wake you up! Fortunately, this is temporary. They are building a massive addition to this campground. Looks like the new sites will have hook ups for water and electricity. The big activity here is hiking the petrified forest, which was much cooler than we expected! On April 26 it was way too chilly for water sports. (There's no place to ride your gravel bike. We tried to go out the back on a dirt road -that we saw on a map- but there's a sign up that says no trespassing, private property. Which is a shame. There is a newish single track system on the plateau above, but it looked highly...