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Utah Oddities

Unusual destinations, curious landmarks, and worthwhile detours across Utah.

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11 documented oddities Highest curiosity first

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Curious Landmarks

Mars Desert Research Station

Hanksville, Utah

In the Utah desert, crews live inside a white cylindrical habitat, wear simulated spacesuits, grow plants, drive rovers, and practice living on Mars without leaving Earth.

Giant Objects

Dinah the Pink Dinosaur

Vernal, Utah

A forty-foot pink dinosaur wearing a giant grin has greeted travelers entering Vernal since 1958 and somehow became historic enough for the National Register.

Curious Landmarks

Hole N” The Rock

Moab, Utah

A 5,000-square-foot home with fourteen rooms, a fireplace, shelves, and furniture was blasted and carved directly into a giant sandstone cliff south of Moab.

Roadside Attractions

Sun Tunnels

Lucin, Utah

Four enormous concrete tubes sit in an empty Utah desert, aligned with the solstices and drilled with constellations that project moving stars of sunlight inside.

Natural Oddities

Goblin Valley State Park

Green River, Utah

Thousands of squat sandstone figures crowd a Utah valley so densely that the landscape looks less eroded than populated by an army of stone creatures.

Roadside Attractions

Metaphor: The Tree of Utah

Wendover, Utah

An 87-foot concrete tree covered in huge colored spheres rises alone from the Bonneville Salt Flats like vegetation imported from another planet.

Curious Landmarks

Hollow Mountain

Hanksville, Utah

Hanksville has a functioning gas-station convenience store blasted directly into solid sandstone, with fuel pumps outside and a cavern behind the cash register.

Natural Oddities

Fantasy Canyon

Vernal, Utah

A tiny patch of Utah desert is packed with impossibly delicate sandstone creatures, arches, fins, faces, and forms that look sculpted rather than eroded.

Natural Oddities

Mystic Hot Springs

Monroe, Utah

Hot mineral water flows down colorful mineral terraces into pools and a row of vintage bathtubs perched outdoors on a Utah hillside.

Roadside Attractions

Spiral Jetty

Corinne, Utah

A 1,500-foot coil of black basalt curls across the shore of the Great Salt Lake, disappearing beneath the water and returning again as lake levels change.

Giant Objects

Snelgrove Ice Cream Cone

Salt Lake City, Utah

A huge double-scoop ice cream cone survives in Salt Lake City after the famous parlor it advertised disappeared around it.