Utah's oldest and most visited national park, Zion National Park is located in southwestern Utah.

Most of the park's 147,000 acres are located within Washington County; however, the extreme eastern section of the park is in Kane County, while the park's northern tip extends into Iron County. Zion Canyon is located on the southern part of the Markagunt Plateau. It is cut by tributaries of the Virgin River which have left eroded canyon walls and monoliths that are beautiful and overpowering.

Zion Canyon presents a diverse collection of nature's wonders that include such features as the towering and magnificent 2,200-foot Great White Throne, the park's most famous landmark; the Court of the Patriarchs; the Sentinel; the Watchman; Checkerboard Mesa; Kolob Arch, at 310 feet the world's largest known natural span; and the Narrows of the Virgin River, where a person can walk upstream to places so narrow that both sides of the canyon walls can almost be touched with one's outstretched hands.

Protected within Zion National Park's 229 square miles is a spectacular cliff-and-canyon landscape and wilderness full of the unexpected including Kolob Arch -the world's largest arch - with a span that measures 310 feet. Zion National Park is full of beautiful colors, scenery and wildlife.

One early visitor to Zion Canyon, Frederick S. Dellenbaugh, an artist who had been with John Wesley Powell on his second trip down the Grand Canyon in 1872, spent part of the summer of 1903 painting in Zion Canyon. The paintings were exhibited at the 1904 St. Louis World's Fair and an article about Zion Canyon, "A New Valley of Wonders," was published by Dellenbaugh in the January 1904 issue of Scribner's Magazine. In the article, Dellenbaugh described his first view of the Great Temple, which stands at the entrance to Zion Canyon: "One hardly knows just how to think of it. Never before has such a naked mountain of rock entered our minds. Without a shred of disguise it transcendent form rises pre-eminent. There is almost nothing to compare to it. Niagara has the beauty of energy; the Grand Canyon of immensity; the Yellowstone of singularity; the Yosemite of altitude; the ocean of power; this Great Temple of eternity."