Bullion Canyon Miners Park

End of the Canyon of Gold road

Miners Park (Forest Service spelling varies: Miner’s / Miners Park Interpretive) is the self-guided interpretive stop at the upper end of Bullion Canyon on Fishlake National Forest above Marysvale, Utah. From as early as 1865, placer gold in the creek and hard-rock veins in the canyon walls pulled thousands of prospectors into what Forest Service tour materials still call the Canyon of Gold. Outdoor mining equipment and a short historical walking trail cover daily life in the district.

Nine numbered stops on the Canyon of Gold auto tour lead up the canyon before Miners Park as Stop 9. Stops along the way include the old toll road, mill stables, Witt Tate’s Mine, the Dalton Mill, an arrastra, the Bullion City townsite area, the Gibbs cabin site, and the Bully Boy Mill. The brochure is available at district offices, in Marysvale, and in trail boxes along the tour; borrow-and-return is free, or use the fee tube if you keep a copy. The park itself is day-use only — no camping — with vault toilets and no potable water. Pets must stay leashed. There is no entrance fee.

Driving up from Marysvale

Miners Park is about 6.5 miles west of Marysvale. From the junction of Main Street and Bullion Avenue, go west on Bullion Avenue about 0.6 mile, then turn left onto Bullion Canyon Road and continue about six miles to the park. Forest Service tour text describes the road as rough in places but passable by most two-wheel-drive vehicles; the interpretive driving segment stretches roughly 2.5 miles from the tour’s trailhead start and typically takes an hour or two with stops. ATV use is limited strictly from the forest boundary to Miners Park. Beyond the park, Trail 074 at Bullion Falls Trailhead continues as a horse and foot route. Vehicles stop short of the falls.

Season of use is listed as May through October. Winter snow and spring mud keep ordinary cars out. The 2024 Silver King wildfire burned hard through this drainage. Forest Service tour pages warn that not all original auto-tour stops may be available, and that burned areas carry hazards: falling trees, flash flooding, and shifting soils. A separate Forest Service project page addresses post-fire stabilization along Bullion Canyon Road. Expect scorched slopes, missing vegetation, and temporary or permanent loss of some interpretive markers until recovery work finishes.

Reading the mining landscape

What remains on the ground is fragmentary industrial archaeology: mill foundations, arrastra traces, cabin sites, and scattered equipment at Miners Park. Intact commercial streets are gone. Bullion City was a working mining camp; most of its buildings no longer stand. Open shafts, adits, and unstable timberwork kill people in mining districts like this — stay on signed trails and do not enter any mine working. Collecting artifacts or using metal detectors on federal land is illegal; report looting to the Piute County Sheriff.

From Miners Park, hikers and stock users can continue toward Bullion Falls and the non-motorized network that ties into Bullion Pasture and the Paiute trail system higher on the Tushar Mountains. Those are separate trailheads and longer days. A Marysvale base on US-89 pairs well with Miners Park and other Fishlake district geology stops; the full auto tour and a long waterfall hike usually need more than one afternoon. Bring water, watch weather on burned slopes, and treat the canyon as an active post-fire landscape. Real mining hazards sit under the interpretive signs.