Where the Waters Meet
Every town in this valley has a place the locals loved long before anybody thought to put up a sign, and in La Verkin that place is the bottom of the gorge. Confluence Park takes its name from exactly what happens down there: the Virgin River comes grinding out of its upper canyon and gathers in Ash Creek — whose lower reach near town is known to old-timers and to the U.S. Geological Survey gauge alike as La Verkin Creek. Three desert waters braid into one, and the whole tangle of channels, gravel bars, and shade sits cradled at the meeting point of La Verkin, Hurricane, and Toquerville.
It is a big piece of country hiding in plain sight. The preserve runs to about 344 acres, managed by Washington County through the Red Cliffs Desert Reserve office in St. George. What makes it feel secret is the geography. The park lies at the foot of tall basaltic lava cliffs — the hardened bones of old volcanic flows that cap the benches all through this valley — so the three towns sit up on the rim while the river runs cool and green a couple hundred feet below, out of sight until you start walking down into it.
People have known about this spot for a very long time. Archaeologists have found evidence of human habitation going back more than a thousand years, and hikers still pass a rock overhang blackened by ancient fires, left by the ancestral Puebloan people who camped where the water, the shade, and the game all came together. The confluence has been a good place to be for a hundred generations; the Red Cliffs designation is just the newest chapter of people deciding it was worth protecting.
Wildlife, Birds, and What to Do Down There
A desert river doing what this one does — pooling, spilling, feeding a thick belt of cottonwoods and willow — creates what biologists call a riparian corridor, one of the richest habitats in the entire Southwest. Washington County calls Confluence Park critical habitat for endangered fish and threatened birds, and if you have any interest in wildlife, this is one of the best reasons in the valley to lace up your boots.
For birders it is a genuine draw. Riverside cottonwood-willow gallery like this is the preferred nesting habitat of the federally endangered southwestern willow flycatcher and the western yellow-billed cuckoo, both of which cling to precisely these shrinking green ribbons along the Virgin. You do not need to spot a rarity to have a good morning, though — the dawn chorus in the cottonwoods and the raptors riding the thermals off the lava rim are payment enough. Bring binoculars and go early.
There is a surprising resident here too. Down near the Hurricane trailhead sits a desert tortoise rehabilitation pen — a razor-wire enclosure where injured or displaced Mojave desert tortoises are cared for, a reminder that this whole riverbottom is stitched into the larger 62,000-acre Red Cliffs Desert Reserve, created to protect that slow, ancient, federally threatened reptile.
As for what to actually do: the park carries roughly eleven trails open to hiking, mountain biking, and horseback riding, with camping allowed by permit. The classic outing links the Confluence Trail with the Virgin River Trail into a loop of about four miles and only around 300 feet of elevation change. It rates as easy, runs a comfortable two hours, and is well within reach of kids. Along the way you pass the industrial ghosts of the old riverbottom: a small hydroelectric power station built in 1916, a weathered grain silo, and the remains of an old dairy. Photographers should time it for the end of the day — sunset under those giant cottonwoods, with the lava cliffs going warm overhead, is the shot everybody comes back with.
La Verkin — The Town and Its Curious Name
You cannot write about Confluence Park without the story of the town on the rim, because the two grew up together. La Verkin sits on the north bank of the Virgin River, on a bench squeezed between the creek on the west and the great Hurricane Fault on the east, three miles south of Toquerville. Erastus Snow first eyed this bench for settlement in 1861 and decided the irrigation would cost more sweat than it was worth. He was not wrong. It took another generation of stubborn men — Thomas Judd and Thomas P. Cottam among them — to survey a canal, and the La Verkin Fruit and Nursery Company incorporated in 1889 to make it happen.
What they built to get water onto that bench is a quiet engineering feat: a dam two miles up the river and a ditch that included an 800-foot tunnel bored clean through Kaibab limestone, with water finally running in April of 1891. The Gubler brothers and James Pectol laid out the townsite in 1898, and La Verkin incorporated in 1927. For decades it lived on fruit, turkeys, and dairy — a farm town perched above the very confluence you can now hike.
And the name — this is the tidbit visitors always want, and nobody can prove it, which is half the fun. One camp says it is a mangling of the Spanish La Virgen, "the Virgin," after the river the Spanish named. The other points to an 1852 letter in the Deseret News referring to "Leiver Skin," thought to be a garbled transposition of "Beaver Skin," with early records spelling it "Leiversking" before it wore down to La Verkin. A river named the Virgin flowing past a town that may be Spanish for the Virgin — or may just be a fur trapper's beaver pelt lost in translation — is exactly the kind of story this country specializes in.
A Local's Field Notes
Getting in is the easy part. There are three trailheads on the La Verkin side and one over in Hurricane, all with straightforward access. From La Verkin, the simplest is to follow 900 North down to the entrance — that one has a restroom, as does the south trailhead in Hurricane. Coming straight off the highway, there is also a pullout on SR-9 just south of the River Rock Roasting Company that drops you onto the Confluence Trail. Note that the trails run downhill to the water, which is a gift on the way in and honest work on the way back up in the heat.
A few practical truths. This is a riverbottom, so it has bugs — pack insect repellent or wear long pants, especially in the warm months. The river runs cold and clear in spring when the snowmelt is up and drops to a lazy trickle by late summer; the shade of the cottonwoods, not the water level, is what makes a hot-weather visit bearable, so go early or late and skip the midday furnace. The genuinely lovely windows are spring and fall, when the light is long, the birds are moving, and the crowds bound for Zion have not thought to look down here.
The tortoise pen is fenced for a reason — admire it, do not disturb it — and the same goes for the whole reserve: this is protected habitat for endangered species, so stay on the trails and pack out what you pack in. If you are bringing a dog, check the current Red Cliffs and La Verkin City rules first, since reserve lands here can carry leash requirements and seasonal restrictions. Beyond that, it is a forgiving, family-friendly walk with big scenery — the kind of place that rewards a slow morning far more than a fast one.
Nearby — make it a loop
Confluence Park sits at a crossroads, which makes it easy to fold into a bigger day. Just up the Virgin River gorge lie the Pah Tempe Hot Springs, the old La Verkin mineral baths that steam right out of the same canyon wall. Right in town you are standing at the SR-17/SR-9 gateway junction, the intersection that funnels nearly everyone headed for Zion, and a short way off, the road crosses the lava-canyon bridge locals nicknamed "Octopussy" for the 1983 James Bond film shot in the gorge below.
The Toquerville connection is the easy one to overlook and the best one to make. Because the confluence gathers Ash Creek coming down from the north, Toquerville is quite literally upstream, only a few minutes away by car. Point the wheels north and chase the water toward Toquerville Falls, a spring-fed cascade over black basalt, then wander the shady old Historic Main Street with its pioneer homes and irrigation ditches.
If your legs still have miles in them, drop over to Hurricane for the Hurricane Canal Trail, which traces the hand-dug ditch pioneers cut through solid rock, or cool off at Sand Hollow State Park, where warm blue water laps against orange sandstone a few minutes south. And if the river itself has hold of you, follow the Virgin upstream toward the town of Virgin and its river access, where the same water you watched braid together at the confluence runs clear on its way down from Zion.