In the News
Utah's Highway 12 tops for scenery
TROPIC, Utah - The U.S. magazine Car and Driver
picks Utah's 122-mile Hwy 12 as one of the 10 most picturesque
roads in America.
For Lamar LeFevre, who lives on it, it is THE best.
LeFevre, with his wife Ethel, runs the Bryce Point
bed and breakfast ($65 double.) It offers friendliness, liberal
amounts of local lore, and light breakfast pancakes whose batter
has been liquified with-7UP.
Tropic is oddly named considering it's within 10
miles of Bryce Canyon National Park, which gets snow every month
of the year.
As a boy, LeFevre helped his granddad herd 12,000
sheep there. Farming was the only occupation around Tropic, which
is little more than a village. Seven years ago it opened its first
motel. Today there are 105 rooms for visitors.
"That's because of 12," said LeFevre. "It's a beauty."
So I had to go see. Even by southern Utah's high standards, he
was right.
The road begins at a junction with 89, a major route
from Arizona to Salt Lake City. Immediately there is dramatic
scenery. The rock walls are as red as the name of the first stretch,
Red Canyon. Twice Hwy 12 cuts through russet tunnels before climbing
to Summit, near 8,000 feet. This is on an open plateau of sagebrush,
part of Dixie-National- Forest. The forest and that kind of altitude
are accompaniments for most of the rest of the journey.
Bryce Canyon, with its thousands of pinnacled hoodoos,
is the highlight of the loop. Its entrance is three miles off
12.
Tropic and other valley villages follow. This is
empty country. They are 20 and more miles apart. In between are
state parks, one named Kodachrome, which gives an idea of the
colorful country- side. An Anasazi Indian Village is beside the
road.
From the village of Boulder a 12-mile side road
across the mountains is called Hell's Backbone. There are sharp
drop offs on either side of it.
Hwy 12 is impressive enough. From high lookouts
in the Boulder Mountains the view is often 100 miles to other
ranges, like the Henry Mountains and the La Sal chain near the
Colorado border.
Tourism boost
Then come cooler stretches amid birches before a
descent to where the route ends as it began, amid terra cotta
mesas and gorges.
"We are going to have a million people a year travelling
12 soon," said LeFevre. He could be right. Tourism is having an
immense impact on Utah. Europeans have found it. Already, at Bryce
Canyon in May, there was nearly as much French and German to be
heard as English.
The Toronto Sun, Wednesday June 9, 1993
