Factory Butte: Where It Is, How To See It, And Where You May Ride
Factory Butte sits 12 miles west of Hanksville on SR-24. Here is how to find it from Capitol Reef, what you can photograph from the road, and exactly which acres are open to OHV use, and which are not.
Morgan Kotter · August 10, 2026 · 10 min read
Factory Butte is a free-standing butte in the Mancos-shale badlands of south-central Utah, 12 miles west of Hanksville on State Route 24. It is visible directly from the paved highway, so seeing it requires no special vehicle. Riding there is a different matter: the BLM allows off-highway vehicles only inside three designated open areas totalling roughly 8,000 acres, and on more than 200 miles of designated routes. Everything outside those boundaries is closed to cross-country travel to protect endangered plants.
Factory Butte is one of the most photographed formations in Utah that almost nobody plans a trip around. It is usually something people notice through a windshield on the way to somewhere else, which is a shame, because the badlands it stands in are more interesting than the butte itself and reward getting out of the car.
Where Factory Butte Is
The Bureau of Land Management gives the location plainly: 12 miles west of Hanksville, Utah, on State Route 24. It stands north of the Fremont River, in the stretch of desert between the eastern boundary of Capitol Reef National Park and Hanksville.
West of Hanksville on SR-24: 12 mi
Acres open to OHV: ~8,000
Acres at Swing Arm City: 2,602
Miles of designated routes: 200+
The whole area was designated a Special Recreation Management Area in October 2008, which is the administrative act that created the open-area boundaries described below.
Getting There From Capitol Reef
From Torrey or Teasdale you drive east on SR-24, through the national park, past the visitor center and the Fruita orchards, and out the eastern side into open country. Factory Butte comes up on the north side of the highway as you approach Caineville.
Treat it as a half day, not a stop
It is roughly an hour each way from Torrey, and the entire drive is inside the park or empty desert with no services. Fuel before you leave and carry water. If you are already going as far as Hanksville, the butte is 12 miles short of it and costs you almost nothing extra.
The drive itself is a large part of the value. SR-24 through the eastern park is one of the better paved miles in southern Utah, and the transition from the Waterpocket Fold into the grey Mancos badlands happens over about fifteen minutes.
What You Are Actually Looking At
The formation sits in Mancos shale, a soft, fine-grained marine sedimentary rock laid down when this was the floor of the Western Interior Seaway. Shale erodes fast and erodes evenly, which is why the surrounding badlands are so densely and regularly ridged. The butte survives because a harder cap rock on top has protected the column beneath it while everything around eroded away.
The practical consequence of shale is the one that catches visitors out: when it gets wet it turns to a slick, deep, clinging mud. This is not a surface that dries quickly or that traction control saves you from. Rain anywhere in the area changes what is drivable, sometimes for days.
Mancos shale is impassable when wet, and the sky here is bigger than the weather report. Storms that never reach you can still soak the ground you were planning to drive on. Check conditions with the BLM at +1 (435) 542-3461 before committing to anything off the pavement.
The OHV Areas, What Is Open
This is the part people get wrong, and the part with real legal consequences. Riding is permitted, but only in defined places.
The BLM manages three OHV open areas where cross-country motorized travel is allowed:
Swing Arm City
2,602 acres. The largest and best known of the three, between Factory Butte and Caineville on the north side of the highway. This is the purpose-built play area, and the one most riders mean when they talk about riding here.
Factory Butte
The open area immediately around the butte itself. In 2019 the BLM reopened 5,400 acres to OHV recreation here after roughly ten years of monitoring following an earlier closure.
Caineville Cove
The third designated open area, east toward Caineville. Smallest of the three.
Together these total roughly 8,000 acres of cross-country open riding, supplemented by more than 200 miles of designated routes through the wider management area. That is a genuinely large amount of legal terrain; the restriction is not that riding is scarce; it is that the boundaries are specific.
The Closures, And Why They Exist
Outside the three open areas, cross-country travel is prohibited and riders must stay on designated routes.
The reason is botanical. Endangered plant species grow in these badlands, and Mancos shale habitat is exactly where they grow. A single pass by a vehicle across untracked shale can destroy plants that took decades to establish, and the tracks themselves persist for years in a surface with no vegetation to recover.
The BLM states the penalty directly: violating the Endangered Species Act carries a maximum fine of $50,000 and up to a year in prison. This is not a courtesy request. Route maps are posted on the on-site kiosks and available from the BLM offices in Richfield and Hanksville.
This history is why the area is contentious. The 2019 reopening of 5,400 acres followed about a decade of monitoring, and it was welcomed by riders and challenged by conservation groups. Both positions are still live. The practical takeaway for a visitor is simply that the boundaries are real, actively managed and worth checking against a current map rather than a blog post, including this one.
Get the current map before you ride
Henry Mountains Field Station, 380 South 100 West, Hanksville, UT 84734, +1 (435) 542-3461. Maps are also posted at the on-site kiosks. Boundaries have changed within the last decade and could change again; the office has the version that is enforceable today.
Photography
Factory Butte is a light-dependent subject more than a composition-dependent one. The badlands in front of it are a field of near-identical ridges, and they only read as texture when the sun is low enough to put a shadow in every fold. At midday the whole scene flattens into grey.
Early And Late
Low, raking light is the entire trick. The ridge texture that makes the photograph appears and disappears within about an hour of sunrise and sunset.
Both Ends Of The Day Work
The butte is visible from a long stretch of highway, so you can position for front light or back light depending on which side you shoot from.
After A Storm
Wet shale darkens dramatically and the contrast against a clearing sky is the best this place looks, provided you stay on pavement to get it.
Scale Needs A Subject
The badlands have no trees and no buildings, so nothing conveys size. A vehicle or a person in frame is usually what makes the photograph legible.
Facilities And Safety
The BLM lists a restroom and interpretive kiosks at Factory Butte. It does not publish drinking water, developed camping or fee information for the site, and you should plan on the assumption that none of those exist.
No Water
Carry everything you will drink, plus a margin. Summer here is genuinely dangerous and there is no shade of any kind.
No Cell Signal
Assume none. Tell someone your plan before you go, and download maps in Torrey or Hanksville.
No Fuel
Nearest is Hanksville, 12 miles east, or Torrey about an hour west.
Flash Flood Risk
Badlands drain fast and hard. Do not be in a wash when rain is falling anywhere upstream, which may be somewhere you cannot see.
After Dark
The badlands east of Capitol Reef are among the darker places you can stand in the lower 48, and Factory Butte is a recognisable silhouette against a star field. It is a legitimate night-photography subject and a reasonable place to simply stop the car on the way back from Hanksville.
Two practical notes. The drive back to Torrey is about an hour in full darkness with wildlife on the road, so build that into the plan rather than discovering it. And the same lack of light that makes the sky good makes the ground hazardous; the shale is cut with drop-offs that are invisible at night.
For a place to actually spend the night under that sky rather than drive home from it, Torrey holds an International Dark Sky Community certification and Capitol Reef is a certified International Dark Sky Park.
Staying Out Here?
We are on open land outside Torrey, a few miles from the park boundary. Two ways to stay.
Guided Photography Trips In The Badlands
Half-day trips run out of the Torrey area for people who would rather shoot than navigate. They are a reasonable alternative to driving the shale yourself, which is the part of this that goes wrong.
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