Anasazi State Park is a small Utah state park located in Boulder along Scenic Highway 12. This park is a great stop along the route to let you out of the car to stretch your legs.
After you pay the fee to enter, you can explore the small museum. Be sure to ask about the Junior Ranger program for your kids, which is free. The museum will take only about 15-30 minutes to explore, but there are some great hands-on activities for the kids. The artifacts in the museum include toys, clothes, and pottery that dates from around 1000 years ago, and part of the junior ranger program includes a scavenger hunt for items in the museum. There is also a short interpretive video to watch.
Most of the fun stuff at Anasazi State Park is located outside. There you’ll find a reconstruction of an ancient pueblo-style building that you can walk in and explore. Our boys loved entering the buildings to see what they look like inside. Be sure to notice the petroglyphs recreated on the outside of the Visitor’s Center as well, as these are replicas of original petroglyphs in the area.
Farther down the trail you’ll come to some actual pithouses that have been excavated on this site. You can’t enter the houses, of course, but they give you a good idea of how the Anasazi lived. These pit houses were burned, and you can still see the burned wood inside the houses. One of the big questions is what happened to these houses.
Our boys enjoyed Anasazi State Park. Plan on spending around an hour at this small historical site. This is a great stop along beautiful Highway 12. It’s also not very far from Capitol Reef National Park.
Boulder makes a good pit-stop on your way from Capitol Reef (near Torrey) to Escalante (and on to Bryce Canyon).
The very impressive Burr Trail runs east from here, and the Singing Canyon is only about 11 miles down the road from Anasazi (to the east and on your left).
Yes, we love the Burr Trail road. It is beautiful. We have it on our itinerary for the Escalante area.