ALMO, Idaho — City of Rocks is a 14,000 square foot reserve southeast of Twin Falls where climbers come from all over to test their skills on a wide variety of routes.
The National Reserve features around 700 named routes with granite spires ranging from 30 feet to 600 feet tall.
"It’s beautiful, look at this place," said Jim Shimberg, who first came to the City of Rocks from Pennsylvania with his wife Dawn in 1989.
We met them hiking around the backside of Window Rock and their daughter Rose currently lives in Salt Lake City, making it even easier for this family to visit one of their favorite places.
"I have good memories as a kid when we came here," said Rose. "I really didn’t want to climb too much, but there are just so many different rocks that we just started climbing on them and there is just so much space."
Now there is even more space after City of Rocks partnered last year with Castle Rocks State Park to purchase 365 acres in Graham Canyon. That will provide people with a new area to explore once that access road is finished.
This year City of Rocks earned the designation as an International Dark Sky Park. It's a great place to camp under the stars, but people need to reserve their campsite before showing up to the reserve where there is no cell service.
"We love it, we are camping here for a couple of nights," said Jim. "There is stuff for everybody. You don't even have to be a good climber," added Dawn.
I hiked into the inner city where I found more places that people could climb, heard the sounds of songbirds, and didn't see another person until I got back on the Creekside Towers Trail. That trail was a short walk, perfect for families. And even though I trekked for several miles, I enjoyed this part of the hike the best.
City of Rocks also has an interesting history, as around 200,000 emigrants passed through this area on the California Trail, most of them after gold was discovered in California in 1848.
"Women and children wandered off to enjoy the sights of the city," wrote Helen Carpenter, an early traveler who wrote this in 1857. "We were spellbound with the beauty and strangeness of it all."
The travelers wrote their names in axle grease, and those can still be read today at Register Rock. We also saw that two families wrote their names on the rock this fall.
Don't do this, not only does it ruin the history of this reserve, but it is against the law. Vandalism has been an issue at City of Rocks with the worst example happening back in 2020.
