Hickman Bridge Trail: Capitol Reef's Best Short Hike

Capitol Reef gets about one-tenth the visitors of Arches. Most people driving Utah’s Highway 24 pass right through, treating it as a convenient stop between Bryce Canyon and Moab. That’s a mistake. Hickman Bridge, a 1.8-mile round trip in the heart of the park, shows you exactly what you’d be missing.

The trailhead sits right off Highway 24, about two miles west of the visitor center in Torrey’s direction. Parking fills up on spring and fall weekends but never reaches the gridlock you’ll find at Arches. If you’re there early, you’ll have it nearly to yourself.

What Drives This Region: The Waterpocket Fold

Capitol Reef exists because of a 100-mile long wrinkle in the Earth’s crust called the Waterpocket Fold. About 65 million years ago, rock layers buckled and tilted west, pushing older layers up against newer ones. The result is a wall of exposed rock that runs almost the entire length of the park, with deeply eroded canyons cutting through it in every direction.

Hickman Bridge sits inside one of those erosion cuts. The Fremont River carved the main canyon, and smaller drainages branch off in every direction. Hickman Bridge Trail follows one of those side drainages to reach a natural bridge formed by an ancient stream.

The nearest town is Torrey, 11 miles west of the visitor center. It’s small but has a handful of good lodges, a few restaurants, and enough gas stations to not worry about your tank.

The Trail Start: Along the Wash

The first half of the Hickman Bridge Trail is flat and easy. You follow the Fremont River wash through open desert, with pale buff cliffs rising on both sides. The wash terrain here is typical of Capitol Reef’s lower elevations, sandy footing with scattered boulders.

Before you start the actual hike, walk east along the highway for about five minutes. The Fremont Culture petroglyphs are carved into the cliff face there. You’ll see bighorn sheep, human figures, and geometric shapes, left by the Fremont people who lived in this region from roughly 600 to 1300 CE. They’re easy to miss if you drive in, park, and start hiking immediately.

Back on the trail, the wash approach gives you your first good look at the Waterpocket Fold. The cliff faces ahead show distinct horizontal bands of color: dark-capped Kayenta sandstone on top, paler Wingate below it, and the buff-colored Navajo sandstone forming the rounded domes that give the park its name. Those dome shapes looked like Capitol building tops to early settlers, which is how the park got its name.

The Climb to the Bridge

About halfway to the bridge, the trail leaves the wash and starts climbing. This is where those 400 feet of elevation gain happen, mostly in the upper half of the trail. The path switchbacks up a rocky slope through scattered juniper and pinyon pine.

It’s not a difficult climb, but it’s steeper than the first half of the hike would suggest. Take your time. The views back down the wash improve with each switchback.

The bridge appears suddenly. You’re following the trail through a narrowing canyon section, and then the arch of Kayenta sandstone spans the drainage above you. There’s no gradual reveal. It’s just there.

Hickman Bridge Up Close

Hickman Bridge is 133 feet wide and 125 feet tall. You walk through the opening. Most people stop in the middle, look up, and spend a few quiet minutes taking it in.

The bridge is Kayenta sandstone, the same dark-capped layer you saw banding the cliffs on the approach. Kayenta forms a hard, erosion-resistant cap on many of Capitol Reef’s formations. Where a stream once ran through a narrow fin of this rock, it carved through the softer material underneath, leaving the harder cap spanning the gap. That’s a natural bridge. It’s different from an arch, which forms through surface weathering and frost action without water running through the fin.

Hickman Bridge was carved by a stream that once flowed through this drainage. That stream is long gone, but the bridge it left behind will outlast anything built in the last thousand years.

Sit under it if you have time. The stone is cool in the morning. Looking up from directly below, the span of Kayenta rock frames a strip of sky. From this angle you can see the texture of the rock clearly, the cross-bedding patterns and the slightly darker crust that forms on exposed desert sandstone.

The View From Above

After the bridge, the trail continues a short distance to a high point above the drainage. From here you’re looking down into the Fremont River canyon, across the highway to the Cohab Canyon cliffs on the south side, and south toward the white domes that define Capitol Reef’s central district.

The Waterpocket Fold runs roughly north-south through your field of view. The tilted, deeply eroded rock faces you’re seeing are the eastern flank of that fold. The white Navajo sandstone domes to the south look almost geological in their repetition, row after row of rounded tops, pale buff in flat light and almost glowing in early morning.

The highway below is a reminder of how accessible all of this is. You drove here, parked, and walked 0.9 miles to stand at a natural bridge the size of a city block. Capitol Reef is, in this way, remarkably generous.

Best Season and Conditions

Spring (March through May) and fall (September through November) are the right windows for Hickman Bridge. Temperatures stay manageable, the light is warmer, and the wildflowers in the wash section can be worth the trip on their own in April and May.

Summer works if you start early. By 10 a.m. in July, the upper section of the trail with no shade will test your heat tolerance fast. Bring more water than you think you need. The trail has no water sources.

Winter is possible on clear days, but snow can make the rocky upper section slippery. Ice on the switchbacks is a real concern in January and February.

Bring at least a liter of water per person for the 1.8-mile round trip in warm weather. Two liters is better.

Combining With Cohab Canyon

The Cohab Canyon trailhead is directly across Highway 24 from the Hickman Bridge trailhead. Cohab Canyon is 3.4 miles round trip with 440 feet of gain, and it’s a genuinely different experience from Hickman Bridge. Hickman opens up and gives you broad canyon views. Cohab stays narrow and enclosed for much of its length.

Doing both in a single day is the best way to spend a full day at Capitol Reef. Hickman Bridge in the morning, a lunch break at the visitor center or back at your car, then Cohab Canyon in the afternoon totals about 5.2 miles with the trailhead crossing. It’s a manageable day for most hikers and covers two of the park’s best short routes.

Most visitors who stop at Capitol Reef for a few hours come away wishing they’d planned for a full day. Hickman Bridge alone justifies the stop. Start there.

Frequently Asked Questions