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Scenic Drive Details:
Length: From Salt Lake it is a 159 mile loop, depending on route taken. We went in via Santaquin and home via Saratoga Springs.
Time Needed: At least 3 hours.
Road Conditions: All major highways. 5 lanes to 1 lane. Paved.
Summit: Point of the mountain is probably the only one.
Restrooms: Gas Stations.
Interesting Things: Historic Buildings, Mines, Paul Bunyan’s Woodpile (additional mileage), Little Sahara (additional mileage).
To Get Here:
We decided to take the quick way down, and the scenic route back. Take i15 to exit 244 Main st in Santaquin. Follow route 6 west to Eureka.
Coming home we took route six to Elberta and then took route 68 (Redwood Rd) back through Saratoga Springs.
The Adventure:
As with all my Scenic Drive adventures a lot of these pictures will be from the passenger seat of a moving vehicle. I will denote these images as PSP for Passenger Seat Photography. Landis drives, I take pictures. :)
Mountains near Provo (PSP) Just to show how much snow they still have this late in the year.
Utah Lake from the east (PSP).
After switching to HW6 I thought this was a neat, different view of Mount Timpanogos from here (PSP).
HW6 as it works it’s way up into the mountains (PSP).
I was a little surprised to be heading in to the mountains as I was expecting a desert (PSP).
Some cool formations (PSP).
Layers of rock (PSP).
Turkey vulture (PSP). I have recently realized that this is the only time of the year I tend to see these.
Eureka sits right on the border of Utah and Juab counties so county and city sign here (PSP).
Water tank with the city name (PSP).
Crumbling building (PSP).
Something I found oddly interesting in Eureka is the mine tailings are just pretty much everywhere. You can see them on both sides of this building here. It seems like if they had continued mining they would have buried the city.
Downtown (PSP).
We found a gas station to do a quick potty break.
Whoa! Look at this old cabin! I like how they built an additional roof over it to help preserve it.
Oh it’s Porter Rockwell's Cabin.
The front.
Information sign. I have heard of Porter Rockwell, but I don't really know much about him, but it looks like he was wanted for attempted murder.
The cabin was built approximately 1865. Wow 165 years old. That is super old, by American standards anyway.
You can kind of see inside through the windows.
Outhouse.
Little cemetery. We think this is probably just a recreation, but don’t know. It could be real.
Crumbling buildings across the street.
The Miners Museum which was unfortunately closed today.
This must be a a model building.
It has an old 1935 projector in it. (source: sign on the wall).
What we suspect to be a recreation mine and an old cart among the real mine tailings.
Downtown along main street.
Another crumbling building.
City Hall. It’s hard to see but that sign says Old 1896 Jail <-- .="" neat.="" p="" sounded="" that="">
Well that looks rugged.
Inside. I imagine there must have been another door other than the bars to keep the elements out. But still.. oi. It must have been rough to be a caught criminal in those days.
I wanted a picture here.
Old equipment behind the Miners Museum.
City Hall is fairly old too.
Old ad. I don’t know how old it is, but it must be quite old.
Another old sign.
Porters Place is still thriving and had customers today.
Old bar. Considering it has a sign saying you must be 21 to enter, it must have at least been recently used.
That was about the end of Main Street.
Looking back.
Old train.
After returning to the car we decided to drive around a little and see if we could find some of the old stuff, without really knowing where any of it was.
Neat church (PSP).
Another crumbling building (PSP). Landis thought it might be an old fire station.
We found a dirt road next to mine tailing that appeared to take us to an old structure (PSP).
I don’t know what it was, but that is pretty neat.
View of the town below.
Panoramic. You can see the absolutely massive tailing pile below.
Old structure again.
Town and the massive tailing pile again.
The city water tank again.
The road continued up for a while so we decided to explore a bit on foot. I made sure to keep an eye out for "no trespassing' signs and did not see one.
More tailings and another structure up above.
Getting a little closer. That was a bit more of a climb than it appeared to be. Oi.
Old piece of equipment. It looks like a steam engine of some sort.
One of several smaller mines we saw around here.
Closer to the upper building.
Oh. It appears to be an elevator of some sort.
Kind of creepy old abandoned building.
Old staircase up. Nope sorry, you couldn’t pay me enough. One of many reasons I would not have made a good miner.
Wow! The old elevators are still intact. Again, nope. Couldn’t pay me enough to put myself in that over that pit of doom.
Said pit of doom. Even with the safety net they put in over it I couldn’t muster that courage to see how deep it was. Landis looked and said it is REALLY deep. eep. Why did they mine strait down? It is absolutely terrifying!
Some bird has decided this abandoned building is a great spot to make a nest.
View of the valley below again.
The lower crumbling structure.
Back on the road, a better view of the Eureka City water tank (PSP).
We were having fun but were getting a little frustrated with just driving around town looking for neat historic things and decided to head out towards Paul Bunyan’s Woodpile. I really should have researched this trip a little more.
Mine tailings everywhere (PSP).
Another old elevator over another mine shaft (PSP). I kind of wish we had pulled over here to read the sign, I am not sure why we didn’t.
So, due to some bad directions our little road trip continued a little further south than we had planned. We missed the turnout and had to push on to the next town/junction of Lynndal which added about 35 miles one way which was about double what we had planned. So, here are some more road trip pictures.
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Another mine just south of town (PSP).
Middle of nowhere (PSP).
Rolling hills (PSP).
We passed the turn off for Little Sahara Recreation Area, this is a picture of it just south on HW6 (PSP). If you were wanting Paul Bunyan’s Woodpile, this is officially too far. I have also never been to Little Sahara, but it looks pretty neat actually. Might have to come back and check it out.
Little Sahara again (PSP).
I think this is Sand Mountain and Black Mountain. (PSP). Black Mountain looks like it might be an old volcano.
We determined we have definitely missed the turn out we were looking for, but really didn’t have a chance to turn around until Lynndal. This completed a little gap on HW6 we had leftover from our last trip out this way down to Delta. I had actually planned to return via Eureka on that trip but had to change plans due to a family issue. So, even though this added extra miles (not that many) it was nice to cross that off now too.
Luckily we got a signal again there so we were able to get directions with google, and it, thankfully, kept guiding us even after loosing service. Not quite sure how that worked, but it did.
Cell tower on a butte (PSP).
Sheep! (PSP).
Terrible shot, because it was far away, but I saw an antelope (PSP).
We finally found the turn of to Paul Bunyan’s Woodpile (PSP). Contrary to what others have posted, it is not signed on HW6, there really is no indication this random dirt road is what you want until you actually turn off onto it. I am not sure if we would have found it without googles assistance.
Anyway, I have some better directions on that post located here.
That was an absolutely incredible freaking formation and I am super happy we decided to check it out, and endured the frustration of trying to do so. But, back to the road trip.
About 2 hours later we were back on HW6 heading back towards delta. Some neat peaks (PSP).
HW6 (PSP).
Peaks above (PSP).
Heading back into the mountains towards Eureka (PSP).
There are 2 additional mining towns south of Eureka (PSP). Mammoth and Silver City. They sound more ghost town like as both signs said no services. I wish we had the extra time to check them out, but meh, maybe another time. I was more interested in checking out Paul Bunyan's Woodpile than a few additional tows this time.
Back to Eureka (PSP).
Entering downtown (PSP). You can see all the dune buggies and trailers coming out of Little Sahara we had to contend with. Still probably better today than tomorrow.
Neat old church (PSP).
The Tintac HS T (PSP).
Leaving town and entering Utah County (PSP).
I think that is Mount Nebo (PSP). You can get a little closer to the backside of the peak via the Nebo Loop Scenic Byway.
Mount Nebo again.
Old Sinclair Station in Elberta (PSP). This marks the next junction. The quickest route is the way we came, forward back through Santaquin, then i15. But I thought we’d do the scenic route through Saratoga Springs, so we went left. This eventually becomes Redwood Road which continues all the way just north of us, but we didn’t take it that far.
Starting to see Utah Lake from the west side (PSP). As well as more familiar peaks, hello Timpanogos!
Fun storm clouds (PSP).
Really faint rainbow (PSP).
Now it’s a bit stronger, but still just a tiny bit of it (PSP).
The lake and Spanish Fork Canyon (PSP). We have continued HW6 up that canyon on our way out to Moab.
Little island (PSP).
Mount Timpanogos, Cascade Mountain and Provo Canyon in between (PSP). You can see some of that on our Stewart Cascades trip. You can also see Y mountain on the right, with Rock Canyon to the left of it.
Storm clouds (PSP).
Better view of Mount Timpanogos (PSP).
Mount Jordan and Box Elder Peak. Dry Canyon nestled between has a great trail up to Horsetail Falls (PSP).
There are quite a few smaller canyons along this these mountains that we have explored as well, but I didn’t want to go over all of them. I do regret not finding somewhere to pull over and get a goo panoramic from out here though.
Eventually you hit the suburbia of Saratoga Springs and the drive becomes less scenic.
Suburbia and American Fork Canyon, the beginning of the Alpine Loop (PSP).
After this we re-connected to i15 and that was the end of the scenic drive.
This wasn’t my favorite scenic drive, but it was neat and we got to explore some neat stuff and I managed to get some pictures from the west side of Utah Lake before they completely develop it. I also completed the gap in HW6 that I wanted to do last time we were out this way, but didn’t do so that was nice. Lots of mileage covered and not a ton to see, but it was still pretty and we had a lot of fun. Plus, Paul Bunyan’s Woodpile more than made the trip worth it!
