For centuries, people and animals traveled from the valley to the high-elevation plateau to use seasonal resources, with Southern Paiutes and later pioneers going up the mountain each summer and returning to the valley when winter arrived. The route up the mountain known as Utah’s Patchwork Parkway, along with many trails in Brian Head and the expansive Dixie National Forest, originated with Southern Paiutes, explorers, pioneers, ranchers, loggers, and other early inhabitants. Brian Head’s high-elevation landscape, part of the Markagunt Plateau and ranging from 9,300 feet to 11,300 feet, was shaped by uplift and erosion and has been used for thousands of years by diverse cultural groups, plants, and wildlife. Southern Paiutes moved seasonally to the Brian Head area to hunt, fish, gather plants and herbs for food and medicines, celebrate friendships, heal, and share stories. After pioneers settled nearby Parowan and Panguitch in the mid-1800s, ranchers drove sheep and cattle to the high plateau meadows for summer grazing, while pioneer women and children went there each summer to make cheese and butter to help sustain their families through the winter. In the late 1800s and early 1900s, loggers established sawmills and logging trails to harvest trees, and places such as Steam Engine Meadow and the Old Sorrel Trail recall the route used to haul timber from Brian Head to Cedar City. In the 1960s, the landscape changed again with the beginnings of Brian Head’s ski resort community, and today people come from far away for year-round outdoor recreation. Brian Head Peak Overlook was built in 1934-1935 by the Civilian Conservation Corps, a work relief program developed by President Franklin Roosevelt during the Great Depression to employ young men on conservation and natural resource projects in rural areas. Reached by Brian Head Peak Road off Utah’s Patchwork Parkway, the overlook offers a 360-degree view that includes peaks and plateaus in Nevada, Arizona, Beaver County, and beyond. The area also includes bristlecone pines, found only in six states including Utah, among the oldest living organisms on earth and often thousands of years old, growing at high elevations in Brian Head and surrounding places such as Cedar Breaks National Monument and the Ashdown Gorge Wilderness in Dixie National Forest.