Cave Spring Cowboy Camp and Trail, Canyonlands National Park - Needles District
- peteuga
- Nov 7, 2021
- 3 min read
Updated: 3 days ago
In my opinion, the Cave Spring Loop Trail and Cowboy Camp could be the best family hike in the Moab area. The trail has just the right mix of excitement, history, and distance to keep all hikers interested.
The Cave Spring Trail is a short loop of only 0.8 miles in the Needles District of Canyonlands National Park. It is important to know that this trail is located about 75 miles south of our 11A3 Moab Vacation Rental near Moab, Utah. This may sound like a long way, but the drive is one of the most scenic in the entire country. You drive past Wilson Arch and through scenic Indian Creek Canyon. The canyon has many sites to see, including the very interesting Newspaper Rock followed by North and South Six Shooter Peaks.
The best way to experience the trail is to hike the trail in a counterclockwise direction so you can explore the local rocks on your way to the camp. This trail is located in the Cedar Mesa sandstone formation, which is famous for eroding into needle-shaped towers that give the area its name, The Needles District. The coolest thing about the hike is climbing the ladders to gain access to the top of the slickrock trails on top of the rocks. As you can see, an 8-year-old had no problems with the ladders. There are just enough challenges on the trail to make it exciting for kids, and it is one of the best family hikes in Canyonlands National Park.
The trail just keeps getting better as you go, and it climaxes with the historic cowboy camp at the life giving Cave Spring. The camp features relics of what life was like for a cowboy in the Utah desert one hundred years ago, far from anyone.
Could you imagine living in this area before Canyonlands National Park was formed in 1964? Just think how remote this area would have been. I would imagine the cowboys would go weeks without seeing any other people or hearing news from the outside world. Though the cowboys may not have had many human visitors, it appears they were always battling rats to keep them off their tables and out of their food. There are several, now abandoned, airstrips in Canyonlands National Park that were once used to keep places like this camp supplied. I have never fully unstood why running cattle in the desert of Utah is such big business; it seems to me that there is little for the cows to eat, they destroy the native plants and cause dust.
Take time to enjoy the camp and its surroundings. Info signs will guide you along and give you details of the area. Note that if time is short, the camp is right near the parking area if you hike the trail clockwise, and it would take less than five minutes. In my opinion, it would be a shame to miss the rest of the trail, especially after making the drive all the way out to the Needles District from Moab, Utah.
If you found this area interesting and would like to see other cowboy relics, you can take a UTV or Jeep out onto Dome Plateau and visit Wind Cave and the old uranium mining camp. Other notable hikes in the Needles District include Druid Arch.
If you are considering a Moab adventure we would recommend checking out the townhomes at Moab Adventure Condo. We stayed with them and it was so nice to have room to relax and not be stuck in a cramped hotel room. Since the cost of the rental was split between two families it actually ended up being cheaper than a hotel room and much nicer. Not to mention the pool and hot tub were just sets from our condo.
