Bumbleberry Inn

Howard Smith moved his family to Springdale in February 1972. The building was new — 24 units, simple construction, the first season of what would become the longest continuously family-owned business in town. More than fifty years later, the Bumbleberry Inn at 97 Bumbleberry Ln is in its third generation of Smith family operation, and the family has no intention of selling.

The name comes from a pie. Grandma Constance Madsen, who ran the previous kitchen on the site, had a busload of tourists arrive when she lacked a single dominant berry filling. She made pies from whatever she had — a mix of berries with no clean name — called it Bumbleberry, and it became the establishment's identity. The recipe is a family secret. The pie is still on the menu.

The Bumbleberry compound today includes the inn, an on-site restaurant serving the famous pie and a full food menu, a gift shop, a theater running live productions, and a shuttle stop serving the Zion Park transportation network. It sits a mile from the Zion South Entrance on the main corridor. Virtually every visitor passing through Springdale passes the door. For three generations, the Smiths have been there to greet them — through fires, through off-seasons, through the transformation of Springdale from a small canyon town to one of the most visited corridors in the National Park system.