Utah's Historic And Small City With Art, Fishing, And Mountain Views Is A Scenic Getaway

When people think about Utah's natural features, the soaring sandstone cliffs of Zion and the spindly spires at Bryce Canyon might come to mind. However, Utah is more than just red rocks. It also has forests, mountains, and, in the case of Fairview, several lakes. 

Located in the northern part of Sanpete County, about a 1.5-hour drive south of Salt Lake City, the rural small city of Fairview rests about a mile from the forest-covered Fairview Canyon. It's an ideal place to visit if you're looking for a scenic getaway with mountain views, plentiful fishing, and historic charm. 

Fairview was founded in 1859, and by 1900 it was a thriving agricultural hub, with multiple shops, two hotels, and six sawmills. Named for the "fair view" of the valley its high elevation affords, Fairview is known for its scenic drives with stunning mountain views and fields of wildflowers in the summer. Perhaps the most spectacular time to visit is fall, when the aspens glow yellow, and the bigtooth maple trees are aflame in red and orange. "I've lived in Sanpete my whole life," writes a commenter on Reddit. "Fairview Canyon will always be the most gorgeous fall drive in Utah to me."

The city of Fairview is small — home to about 1,300 people — and is perhaps best known for the places it's near rather than what's within the town limits itself. This is made clear from the Fairview welcome sign, which reads: "Fairview: The Gateway to Skyline Drive." 

Skyline Drive, which runs along the Wasatch Plateau, is one of the highest-altitude roads in America. This 100-plus-mile dirt road winds across the mountaintops from Highway 6 to Highway 70 in Utah, south of Salt Lake City. The route takes travelers past herds of deer and elk, alpine meadows of wildflowers, several lakes teeming with trout, and through the fir trees, sagebrush, and aspens of Manti-La Sal National Forest.

In the winter, Fairview Canyon has skiing, snowmobiling, and snowkiting. In the summer, it shifts into a hotbed for camping, boating, and fishing, much like Brian Head, a year-round playground for high-altitude adventure, located three hours south of Fairview. If you enjoy lakeside camping or fishing, Fairview has a number of high-altitude lakes, including Miller Flat Reservoir Campground, with a 65-acre reservoir teeming with rainbow, brook, and cutthroat trout, as well as Electric Lake, Gooseberry Reservoir, Cleveland Reservoir, Beaver Dam Reservoir, and Huntington Reservoir. 

The Huntington Reservoir is also the location of the Huntington Mammoth Site, where construction crews in 1988 unearthed the skeletal remains of a 15,000-year-old Columbian Mammoth, one of the best-preserved examples ever discovered. This prompted the Fairview Museum of History and Art to construct a new building designed to house the mammoth. It should be noted, however, that the mammoth you see in the museum today is not the original specimen, but rather a life-size replica. The original mammoth skeleton is preserved at the Prehistoric Museum in Price, Utah. 

While the mammoth may have helped put the Fairview Museum of History and Art on the map, the museum is also praised for its art collection, which primarily features works from Utah artists.  "Extremely beautiful museum, entry was free, the staff was super kind, and the art was wonderful," writes a reviewer on Google. "You could easily spend an hour looking at each work of art." With five buildings and outdoor displays, the museum is surprisingly expansive given the town's small size. The museum also offers painting, pottery, and woodworking classes.

There are no hotels in Fairview, but the town offers some eclectic vacation rental options that include historic cabins and farmhouses with mountain views and even a converted jailhouse. Just a 10-minute drive away, you can go shopping and view heritage homes in the quaint 'Gilmore Girls'-like town of Mount Pleasant. Sanpete County as a whole offers some of the best-preserved pioneer-era buildings, like the ones found in nearby Spring City, about 15 minutes south of Fairview. The closest airport to Fairview is the Salt Lake City International Airport, which is about 100 miles away.