The eleven-year ditch that made a town possible
Here is the thing folks miss when they zip past Hurricane on their way to Zion: this whole town exists because a few hundred stubborn pioneers spent eleven winters chiseling a ditch into a cliff. No canal, no town. It really is that simple.
The story starts on July 11, 1893, when the Hurricane Canal Company was organized in nearby Toquerville. The visionaries were James Jepson Jr. of Virgin and John Steele of Toquerville, with county surveyor Isaac McFarlane running his lines along the cliff faces. The plan was audacious to the point of foolishness: divert water out of the Virgin River, carry it roughly seven and a half miles along the sheer wall of the river canyon, then swing south along the Hurricane Cliffs, and drop it onto the dry Hurricane Bench, where two thousand acres of good soil sat baking with no way to water it.
They built it by hand. Picks, shovels, crowbars, a few homemade wheelbarrows, and blasting powder. Men hung off ropes on unstable ledges to blast twelve tunnels straight through solid rock and to notch a shelf for the water where there was no shelf at all. Where the ground fell away entirely, they ran the water across wooden flumes and trestles. Over a hundred men worked those first winters, mostly between November and May when farm work was slow, and they were paid in shares of land and water rather than cash.
It nearly died. By 1902 the crew had dwindled to eight or ten discouraged men, and the money was gone. What saved it was the LDS Church buying five thousand dollars of canal stock that year, which put crews and giant powder back on the cliff. All told the canal cost around fifty-three thousand dollars, a staggering sum for a handful of frontier families. On August 6, 1904, nearly eleven years after that first meeting, water finally ran onto the bench. Settlers followed almost immediately, and the Hurricane Canal was later listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1977.
Walking the trail today
The canal stopped carrying water in the late 1980s and early 1990s, when a modern pressurized system finally retired it after nearly ninety years of service. But the route survived, and today the Bureau of Land Management's Canal Trail lets you walk the old grade the pioneers cut.
Be honest with yourself about what this is. The Canal Trail proper runs about 3.15 miles and is rated difficult, and it is hikers only, no bikes. Most people reach it by adding the Rim Trail from the Hurricane Hills Trailhead, which brings the round trip to roughly five miles, or they stitch it into a popular seven-mile loop using the Rim Trail on the way back. There is also a Virgin Dam Trailhead off State Route 59 for a different approach.
This is not a stroll. You are literally walking a ledge the pioneers blasted into a cliff, so expect steep drop-offs, narrow spots, and stretches where you scramble over lava boulders. There is a notorious pinch called The Drop, a steep, tight passage lined with big rocks that will get your attention. Rockfall has reshaped parts of the path over the years, so watch your footing. Anyone uneasy about heights and exposure should think twice, and it is no place for small children off-leash.
What you'll see out there
The reward for the effort is that you are hiking inside a piece of engineering history. For long stretches the old canal grade is right there under your boots, a shelf twelve feet wide with the channel cut into it, following the contour of the cliff exactly the way the surveyor laid it a century and a quarter ago.
The showstoppers are the tunnels. Twelve were blasted through the rock originally; three survive on this trail, one closed for safety and two you can still pass through. The longest is about forty feet and goes pitch black in the middle even on a bright day, so a flashlight or headlamp is genuinely useful, though there are bypass routes if tight, dark spaces are not your thing. You will also spot remnants of the old wooden flumes and the notched ledges, and it does not take much imagination to picture men dangling on ropes doing this with hand tools.
Then there is the view. The trail rides the rim above the Virgin River gorge with big open sightlines toward Zion National Park and the Pine Valley Mountains. Below you is the same river the pioneers tapped; out on the bench is the green town their water created. Few hikes lay out cause and effect so plainly.
One tidbit tourists never know: the name. Back in the 1860s, church leader Erastus Snow was riding through here when a whirlwind ripped the top clean off his buggy. He reportedly said, "Well, that was a hurricane. We'll call this Hurricane Hill." The name stuck to the hill, then the bench, then the town and its canal. And yes, locals say it HUR-i-kun, not like the storm, so you can pass as a native.
Local tips before you go
Season matters more than anything here. This is a south-facing cliff with essentially zero shade, so summer is genuinely dangerous. Aim for spring or fall, or go at first light in the shoulder seasons. Bring more water than you think you need.
Wear real shoes with grip, not sandals. The scrambling and the loose rock demand it. Pack a headlamp for the tunnels, and go slow through the narrow ledges and The Drop. If you want the history without the exposure, the Hurricane Valley Heritage Park and Museum in town interprets the canal story, and there is a canal monument and replica flume near the old trailhead at the east end of 200 North, both of which are easy family stops.
As with all our Hurricane Cliffs trails, cell service is spotty on the rim. Tell someone your plan, and give yourself daylight to spare on the way out.
Nearby — make it a loop
The canal is the perfect anchor for a day that connects the old water story to the new one. Just up the rim, the JEM Trail and Hurricane Rim are part of the same 20-plus-mile Hurricane Cliffs trail system and are the region's most famous mountain-biking singletrack, with the Rim Trail doubling as your loop-back from the canal.
For the modern chapter of the water saga, drive out to Sand Hollow State Park and Quail Creek State Park, two big reservoirs that now do for the whole valley what one hand-dug ditch once did for a single bench. Golfers can round out the day at Sky Mountain Golf Course, with its red-rock backdrop right in town.
Down the road in La Verkin, Confluence Park sits where the Virgin River meets Ash Creek, the historic Pah Tempe Hot Springs bubble up along that same gorge the canal was carved above, and photographers love the lava-canyon bridge locals nickname the "Octopussy" bridge. Push a few more minutes to Toquerville, where the pioneers first organized the canal company, and you can chase the seasonal Toquerville Falls or stroll the shady Historic Main Street. It all traces back to water, and it all started with that ditch on the cliff.