Toquerville Falls is a perennial waterfall on La Verkin Creek, six miles up an unmaintained dirt road north of the town of Toquerville. The falls themselves are a stepped cascade where La Verkin Creek drops over basalt benches into a series of shallow plunge pools — not a single curtain like Gunlock’s spillway, but a multi-tier sequence the creek has carved over centuries. The whole feature is on BLM ground and access is free; what gates the trip is the road, not a permit booth.
High-Clearance, Maybe Four-Wheel Drive
The Toquerville Falls access road climbs out of town on Spring Drive and turns to graded dirt within the first mile, then to unmaintained dirt with rock obstacles for the next five. High-clearance is strongly recommended; four-wheel drive becomes useful when the road is wet or after a monsoon has cut washes through it. Sedans get stuck regularly in the wash crossings, and the BLM St. George Field Office page is matter-of-fact about it. From town to the falls is about thirty minutes one way in a high-clearance vehicle, longer in anything lower. There is no formal trailhead — the road simply ends at the falls and visitors park along the shoulder.
What the Falls Actually Are
The falls run year-round because La Verkin Creek is fed by springs upstream — they are not snowmelt-dependent the way Gunlock’s overflow is. Flow is heavier in spring (April into June) when the snowpack on Pine Valley Mountain is melting, and lighter in late summer. The plunge pools are shallow enough for kid-safe wading and deep enough at the base of the lower tier for adults to sit in the spray. Photography is the second use — the basalt-and-water composition reads dramatically against the desert backdrop, and the falls have become a regular subject for St. George-area photographers.
License, Fees, Practical Bits
There is no fishing license needed to visit because there is nothing here to fish — La Verkin Creek above the falls is not a maintained fishery and the Utah Division of Wildlife Resources does not list it among Southern Region waters. There is no day-use fee. The road is the cost. Cell service drops out within a few miles of town; if the vehicle gets stuck there is no quick recovery. The closest fuel and groceries are in Toquerville itself or back down in Hurricane.
Toquerville Falls Inside the 435
Toquerville Falls is one of the four water features in the 435 that locals consistently take out-of-town visitors to — Gunlock’s spring waterfall, the Narrows wading walk, the Veyo Pool swim, and Toquerville Falls. Each is a different scale and a different kind of difficulty: Gunlock’s is short-window and crowded, the Narrows is gated by permit and weather, Veyo is a paid swim in a developed pool, Toquerville is gated by the road. The town of Toquerville itself is the gateway — a ten-minute drive from La Verkin and twenty from Hurricane on the Zion-corridor stretch of UT-17.