It’s not that it never snows in Utah’s Snow Canyon State Park, but it is rare. Water in any form is rare with less than 8 inches of rain a year. Mormon settlers in the 1850s called this sunny area in the Mohave dessert “Dixie,” hoping to grow cotton and other crops. Dixie State University still is in nearby St. George, and the park was first known as Dixie State Park. It was later renamed for Mormon settler brothers Lorenzo and Erastus Snow.
White Rocks Amphitheater, Snow Canyon State Park, Utah
The white and red Navajo Sandstone was desert sand dunes 180 million years ago. One trail goes through an area aptly called Petrified Dunes.
Petrified Dunes
There was a tiny pocket of water, and the folks on top of one dune give a sense of scale.
Reflected dune
The moon has kept watch over the area when this was desert sand dunes, lava flows, and now carved out frozen dunes. A piece of the lava that once covered the area before it was eroded away sits on top the dune in second image below.
