FEATURE
SEASON 2 · EPISODE 5 · OCTOBER 2026
Photography and story by John Menzies
It’s not a canyon.
Bryce Canyon is actually a series of bowl-shaped amphitheaters eroded into the edge of a high plateau in southern Utah. The tall, narrow spires of rock rising from the slopes are called hoodoos.
Hoodoos occur elsewhere in the world, but nowhere are they more concentrated than at Bryce. Here, temperatures cross above and below freezing on roughly 170 days each year. Water seeps into cracks in the rock, freezes, and expands, gradually breaking it apart. As some layers wear away faster than others, the rock left standing takes on the strange, uneven shapes of the hoodoos.
My family and I decided to hike the eight-mile Fairyland Loop Trail to see the amphitheaters up close. I’d expected more of a desert landscape, but as we descended from Fairyland Point on the rim, we walked among green ponderosa pines beneath the orange formations.
What I didn’t know was that timber helped give Bryce Canyon its name.
Ebenezer’s Road
In 1875, a man named Ebenezer Bryce and his family settled in the Paria River Valley, east of the amphitheaters.
Bryce helped build a road from the valley up to the forest to collect logs for his house and fences, along with firewood. Other settlers used the road to collect wood too. They began calling the amphitheater where it ended Bryce’s Canyon.
The Bryce family moved to Arizona in 1880, after about five years in the valley. People continued calling the amphitheater Bryce’s Canyon.
The View
Thirty-five years later, a U.S. Forest Service supervisor named J. W. Humphrey was transferred to Panguitch, where the nearby national forest had its headquarters. One of his rangers urged him to see the place we now call Bryce Canyon.
The ranger brought him to the rim overlooking the amphitheater, at a spot now called Sunset Point. Humphrey later recalled that “it was sundown before I could be dragged from the canyon view.”
He wanted other people to see it too. The next morning, he returned to begin figuring out how they could get there.
Humphrey and others in the Forest Service used photographs, movies, and articles to get the word out about Bryce.
He also obtained money to improve the road to the rim. Local homesteaders did most of the work, and the Forest Service supplied materials for bridges across a river and an irrigation canal. By 1916, the improved road allowed visitors to reach the rim by car.
Visitors also needed meals and somewhere to spend the night. In 1919, a local couple named Ruby and Minnie Syrett began serving meals and accommodating overnight guests in a tent camp near Sunset Point.
The following year, they built the first lodge at Bryce, called Tourist’s Rest.
The Railroad
By 1921, a man named Carl Gray, president of the Union Pacific Railroad Company, was investigating how to bring more travelers into southern Utah.
Other railroads were already offering trips to western national parks. Santa Fe served the Grand Canyon’s South Rim, Northern Pacific brought visitors to Yellowstone, and Great Northern promoted Glacier National Park. Transportation and lodging made those trips practical, and Union Pacific wanted to compete.
Gray chose Cedar City, a town west of Bryce, as the starting point for tours of the region. Union Pacific extended its railway there in 1923, allowing passengers to arrive by train and continue to the scenic attractions by bus.
The railroad also needed places for its passengers to eat and sleep. That same year, it formed the Utah Parks Company to operate lodging and transportation. The company acquired existing businesses and built new facilities, while state and federal agencies improved the roads connecting the destinations.
The railroad bought Tourist’s Rest and the Syretts’ water rights in 1923. It then built Bryce Canyon Lodge near the rim, which opened two years later.
While those arrangements were taking shape, the federal government was deciding how to protect Bryce. President Warren G. Harding designated it a national monument in 1923. Congress authorized a national park the following year, but required the state and privately owned land within its proposed boundaries to become federal property first.
That requirement was met in 1928, and Bryce Canyon National Park was formally established that September.
The Utah Parks Company continued adding places for visitors to eat and stay. In 1932, it built a separate cafeteria and camp center near what’s now North Campground. Later called Bryce Canyon Inn, that building now houses the General Store.
That General Store was part of my plan for our eight-mile Fairyland Loop hike. The trail descends into the amphitheater and returns along the rim. Our route was set so we’d reach the store after roughly six miles, once we’d made the steep climb back up.
We stopped for food, drinks, and a break before walking the remaining stretch along the rim to Fairyland Point. I’d planned our hike around that store without knowing it was part of what the railroad had built.
After Dark
Even with roads, lodges, and campgrounds, Bryce is still dark enough to see the Milky Way with the naked eye on a clear, moonless night.
Keeping it that way takes care with outdoor lighting. Bryce’s designation as an International Dark Sky Park in 2019 recognized efforts to protect its night skies through responsible lighting and public education.
Utah Milky Way and Bryce Canyon. Composite photograph.
Still Changing
The view that held Humphrey at the rim until sundown has changed since he stood there.
Along the Navajo Loop Trail, a formation called the Sentinel lost its top ten feet in 1986. Another fifteen-foot section fell in 2016.
A little over a century separated Humphrey’s first visit from our hike. The National Park Service estimates that erosion wears away roughly two to four feet of rock at Bryce every hundred years. That change doesn’t happen evenly. A hoodoo can stand for decades before losing a large section at once.
Some hoodoos have a harder layer of rock on top that protects the softer rock beneath it. As the softer layers wear away, they leave narrow sections supporting much wider tops. When that protective cap falls, the exposed rock below can erode more quickly.
Broad ledges and narrower sections interrupt the sides of these towers along the Fairyland Loop. Their uneven profiles show how differently the rock layers wear away.
Erosion also opens windows through some of the rock walls. The span above an opening can eventually collapse, leaving separate pillars on either side.
An opening through an orange rock wall frames trees and formations beyond. Rock still spans the window overhead—the part that can eventually collapse as erosion continues.
As erosion wears farther into the plateau, new hoodoos can form. But once a formation like the Sentinel falls, it’s gone.
Today, the East Fork of the Sevier River flows across the plateau west of the amphitheaters. Continued erosion could eventually open a path for the river to flow through the Bryce Amphitheater. The river would then carve a V-shaped canyon, gradually wearing away the hoodoos.
The National Park Service suggests that could happen in perhaps three million years.
Bryce Canyon isn’t a canyon. Someday, it may be.
And that is the story behind the place.
THE STORY CONTINUES
Get the next Story Behind The Place delivered to your inbox each month.
KEEP EXPLORING THIS PLACE
See the complete photography collection, including photographs that didn't appear in the story and selected images available as prints.
