What's the name of the Utah road that has one hell of a scenic drive
waiting for you if you've got the spine for it, including a scary
wooden bridge and hair raising vertical drops?

kdl5720 --

It's called "Devil's Backbone."  Here is an excerpt from a description of it:

"An unpaved road, called the Devil?s Backbone, skirts this wilderness
between the towns of Escalante and Boulder, Utah. The Devil?s Backbone
is easy to drive. You won?t need a 4x4 vehicle to drive this road, but
there are lots of steep curves on both side of the summit that are
paved with loose gravel.

"Near the summit, there?s a narrow, one-lane wooden bridge over the
deep canyon that will frighten anyone with a fear of heights. You
can?t miss it. Park along the edge of the road on the east side of the
bridge and walk over to the edge and look down?careful, it?s a long
way."


Here is a link to the page containing that quote as part of a longer
description of this unusual road:
Apogee Photo Magazine
http://www.apogeephoto.com/dec2000/hitchman1_122000.shtml


If you want more information about the road, just use the following
simple Google search and look over the results:

"devil's backbone" utah
://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&q=%22devil%27s+backbone%22+utah


Search Strategy:

I guessed correctly that the word "backbone" might figure in this
answer.  So I conducted the following Google search:

road utah backbone
://www.google.com/search?sourceid=navclient&ie=UTF-8&q=road+utah+backbone


This provided references to two similarly name locations in Utah --
"Devil's Backbone" and "Hell's Backbone."  Further research indicated
conclusively that "Devil's Backbone" was the only one with a wooden
bridge.


I am confident that this is exactly the information you are seeking. 
If anything is unclear, please ask for clarification before rating the
answer.

markj-ga

---

Clarification of Answer by markj-ga on 26 Sep 2004 06:01 PDT

kdl5720 -

My only excuse for my flip-flopping on this answer is that I am not
the only one who is confused.  My conclusion that "Devil's Backbone"
was the name of the road you are looking for was mainly based, first,
on the description of the road (and the bridge) at the site linked in
my answer and, second, on a photo showing part of the wooden bridge,
shown here:

Big Dog Adventures
http://www.bigdogadventures.com/MoabDay9.htm

That photo is captioned this way:  "This is a view off of Devils's
Backbone Bridge in the Death Box Hollow area."

I now see that the following statement appears at the following page:

"Up Lost Creek, thru Death Box Hollow, Over Hell's Backbone Bridge,
Burr Trail, Wolverine Loop Trail, Across Colorado and on into
Blanding."

There is more contradictory and confusing information out there.  For
example, I also misinterpreted (apparently) this photo of the Hell's
Backbone Bridge as showing a structure that didn't qualify as a
"wooden" bridge because is  (now) paved:
Fall 1995 Canyonlands/Escalante Trip
http://home.pacbell.net/lcobb/fall95.htm
 
In sum, thanks to our alert commenter, arkcity-ga, I now believe that
the correct name for the road you are seeking is Hell's Backbone,
otherwise known as Utah Scenic Byway 12. My only consolation is
knowing that it is sometimes incorrectly called "Devil's Backbone," so
we apparently have been talking about the same road and bridge all
along.

markj-ga

I found several places stating Hell's Backbone has a wooden bridge one
at the link here.
http://www.frankstehno.com/sagemesa/destinations/utah/utpoints.htm