Utah's Sunken Sanctuaries: The Ghost Campgrounds of a Changing State

There's a special kind of quiet you find in Utah. It's a silence that fills the vast red rock deserts and echoes in the high mountain canyons. It feels ancient, like it's been there forever. But some of the most special places, the ones that held the deepest quiet, ain't there anymore. They're gone, vanished. Not just closed off, but wiped from the face of the earth, drowned under hundreds of feet of water or paved over by a sea of houses.

These are Utah's ghost campgrounds. They're the spots where people once found solitude in a world-class canyon or a quick escape in the foothills of a growing city. Their stories are a powerful reminder that even in a place as wild and rugged as Utah, nothing is permanent. Understanding what we lost makes us see the places we still have in a whole new light.

The Drowned Cathedral: Losing Glen Canyon to Lake Powell

The story of Utah's lost wilds has to start with Glen Canyon. Before it became Lake Powell, Glen Canyon was considered by many to be one of the most beautiful places on the planet. Author Wallace Stegner called it a place that was “potentially a superb national park,” while Edward Abbey described it as “a portion of earth's original paradise.” [10] It wasn't just one big canyon; it was a 186-mile-long labyrinth of over a hundred side canyons, each a unique world of soaring sandstone walls, natural amphitheaters, hanging gardens, and thousands of ancient ruins. [10, 15] It was, by all accounts, a camper's dream, a place of unparalleled beauty and solitude.

Then came the Glen Canyon Dam. Construction started in 1956, and in 1963, the diversion tunnels were closed, and the water began to rise. [10, 14] The project was designed to provide water storage and hydroelectric power for the growing Southwest. [15] As the waters of the new Lake Powell slowly backed up, they submerged this entire world. One of the most famous lost spots was the Cathedral in the Desert, a breathtaking natural amphitheater with a 60-foot waterfall. [4, 23] For decades, it was completely underwater, a symbol of what many, like Sierra Club leader David Brower, called “America's most regretted environmental mistake.” [4, 9]

For nearly half a century, Glen Canyon and its countless perfect camping spots were gone, thought to be lost forever. But in a strange twist of fate, a historic megadrought in the 21st century has caused Lake Powell's water levels to drop dramatically. [15, 23] As the lake recedes, the canyon is slowly re-emerging. [9, 15] Places like the Cathedral in the Desert have reappeared from the water, and the Colorado River is beginning to flow freely through parts of the canyon again. [4, 15] It's a ghostly, beautiful sight—a second chance to see what was lost, and a powerful, heartbreaking reminder of the sheer scale of this sunken sanctuary.

The Wasatch Front's Urban Sea: When the City Swallowed the Foothills

On the other side of the state, a different kind of flood has been happening, a slower but just as permanent one. The Wasatch Front, that long strip of cities from Provo to Ogden, is home to most of Utah's population. [28] For decades, it has been one of the fastest-growing regions in the country. [32]

After World War II, and accelerating in recent decades, the small towns that once dotted the valley floors began to expand, eventually merging into one continuous metropolitan area. [28, 31] This urban sprawl has steadily crept up the foothills of the Wasatch and Oquirrh Mountains. What was once farmland, orchards, and open rangeland is now a landscape of subdivisions, strip malls, and office parks. [24] Those very foothills, with their easy access and beautiful views, would have been the go-to spots for a quick, informal campout for families in Salt Lake City or Provo. [24] They were the places you could escape to for a night without a long drive, the wild edge of the city.

This kind of loss is harder to see than a giant dam. There’s no single day it happened. It was a gradual paving-over of the wild. Canyons that were once rural getaways are now lined with houses. The quiet, undeveloped spaces that acted as a buffer between the city and the high mountains have been squeezed, and with them, countless little campsites have disappeared.

Other Lost Places: Smaller Lakes and Bigger Mines

Glen Canyon wasn't the only valley in Utah to be drowned. Near Park City, the Jordanelle Dam was completed in 1993, creating the Jordanelle Reservoir on the Provo River. [16] This project submerged the small towns of Keetley and Hailstone, ranching and mining communities with their own unique histories, including a farm co-op for Japanese-Americans during World War II. [18, 20, 29, 30] The valleys that these towns and farms sat in, now deep underwater, were once part of the natural landscape available for recreation. [29]

And sometimes, instead of moving the earth to hold back water, you just move the earth. The Bingham Canyon Mine, southwest of Salt Lake City, is one of the largest man-made excavations in the world—a pit so big it's visible from space. [5, 11] Over a century of open-pit copper mining has removed roughly six billion tons of rock, completely altering a mountain range. [11] While a marvel of engineering, this kind of large-scale resource extraction has massive environmental impacts, including habitat destruction and pollution. [5, 7] It's the ultimate example of development erasing a landscape, and any potential for camping or recreation on that land, forever.

Finding the Ghosts

You can't pitch a tent in a ghost campground. You can't start a fire in a spot that's fifty feet underwater or under the foundation of a suburban home. But knowing these stories changes how you see Utah. When you boat on Lake Powell, you can now picture the sandstone wonderland that's re-emerging from below. When you drive along the Wasatch Front, you can imagine the quiet foothills that existed before the sprawl.

Remembering these lost places isn't about being against progress. It's about understanding what came before and appreciating, with a bit more reverence, the wild and beautiful places we still have. So the next time you're out there, in the quiet of a Utah canyon, take a moment. That little patch of ground is more precious than you know.