Snow Canyon State Park in Utah’s Red Cliffs Desert Reserve preserves a striking landscape of red and white Navajo sandstone, canyon systems, lava flows and tubes, sand dunes, cinder cones, and remnants of the extinct Santa Clara Volcano. Human use reaches back to the 5th century BC, with Ancestral Puebloans and later Southern Paiute peoples using the area long before Mormon pioneers encountered it in the 1850s. Designated in 1958 and opened in 1962, the park became an early part of Utah’s state park system. Expanded over time, it is now valued for year-round recreation, diverse desert ecology, and dramatic scenery that has also drawn filmmakers.