Tushar Mountains Road Trip

About our Trip

Touring through these mountains was, for us, reminiscent of the colorful Rocky Mountains of southwestern Colorado (the San Juan’s).  There is a distinctive timberline and some of the mountain tops have a yellow hue to them.  As we passed through these higher elevations, we really got the feeling of being in the San Juan’s.  One big difference, though, is that the San Juan’s were heavily mined for gold and silver which means that there were many ghost towns and ruins left behind.  Not so for the Tushar’s.  There were only a handful of mining operations here.

Our tour through the Tushar Mountains starts on their north side, off of I-70, at the exit for the Fremont State Park and Museum.  The route we’ll take is about 30 miles long, which doesn’t seem like it would take much time, but it took us most of the day.  That’s because the road is slow-going and we stopped to look at the sites along the way.  The road is all dirt and should be driven using a high-clearance 4WD vehicle or an ATV/OHV. 

As mentioned, the Tushar’s receive a lot of snow so you shouldn’t attempt this trip until after July 1 and before September 15 (unless you like to tackle snow and mud).  Our tour ends just a few miles south of the Eagle Point Ski Resort which is a good place to spend the night.  That’s what we did so that we could continue our exploration of the Tushar’s the next day.  Be aware that, unless you camp, there aren’t a lot of choices for places to stay or eat.

Fremont State Park

If you have a spare hour or two, stop in and visit the Fremont State Park.  There are numerous petroglyph panels and Native American artifacts that were all discovered during the construction of the I-70 freeway.  The museum is a great resource for information about the Fremont People that used to live here.

If you do visit here and still plan on taking our Tushar Mountain road trip route, then think about limiting your stay to no more than an hour or two because our trip will take a good chunk of the day.  We actually made a separate trip to the State Park so that we can spend more time taking in all the sites.  There is a lot of different sites to see here and all are different.  One can easily spend a half day or more walking all of the well-maintained trails and seeing all of the rock-art sites.

Start of our Road Trip

Let’s start our trip.  After taking exit 17 off I-70, head a short distance west and then turn left onto road 113.  Reset your odometer here and follow along to the places of interest mentioned below.  After passing underneath the high bridges of I-70, up a narrow canyon and through a dense pine tree forest, you’ll encounter the remains of an old gold mining area known as Kimberly.

One thing to be on the lookout during this trip is ATVs or OHVs.  These smaller vehicles are common on the various roads through the Tushars and move much faster than larger vehicles.  The popular Paiute ATV Trail runs along sections of the roads this trip follows.  You’ll see the Paiute Trail symbol on many signs along the way.  The trail is a 245 mile-long loop.

Kimberly

Kimberly is reached in just over 7 miles.  This small area prospered from 1890 until 1909.  There was a Lower Kimberly and an Upper Kimberly.  The town was split into these two sections because of the limited space on the steep slopes of the mountains.  At the bottom of canyon was the mining operations, such as the large mill that used to be here.

Mining began in 1890 but the boom years were from 1901-08.  Some 500 people lived in upper and lower Kimberly during those boom years.  Spread across the steep mountainside were many homes, three general stores, three saloons, two hotels and several other businesses.  Surprisingly, today there is no evidence that any type of town existed.  The only remaining structure today is a metal mining building that is visible from the road and on private property.

Butch Cassidy and his Wild Bunch were seen frequently here.  Cassidy grew up nearby (in Beaver and Circleville) and he knew many of the people living in Kimberly.  This is probably the reason why there were never any holdups or company payrolls stolen in Kimberly.

Kimberly also had several well-known brothels.  The town had several murders occur along with the usual amount of drunken brawls that any mining town of that era experienced.  Supposedly, Kimberly had the strongest jail in the entire State of Utah.

Winters were harsh but that didn’t stop those persistent miners from going after the riches they had their sights set on.  Kimberly sat at an elevation of 8,500 feet and the Tushar Mountains are famous for their accumulations of snow.

Mining began again in the 1930s when a new vein was discovered.  The vein played out in 1938 and most people left after that.  The buildings were either moved away or were left for the brutal weather, which didn’t take long to rip the old buildings apart.