Parking is available throughout Springdale and inside the south park entrance. It is possible to leave your vehicle in town and ride the shuttle to the new Zion Canyon Visitor Center, or park at the visitor center. The visitor center is the start of the Zion Canyon loop into the park. Visitors may get on and off the shuttle as many times as they wish. The cost of the shuttle system is included in the park entrance fee.
Z ion provides a wonderful diversity of landscape and ecosystems.
In the case of this park, it is the Virgin River that has done most of the sculpting, as it cut its way through layer after layer of stone. It still flows through the park, relentlessly cutting through Zion Canyon. This was once a desert of huge, blowing sand dunes. In dinosaur times, a shallow sea covered the dunes, and lime from sea animals and other sources seeped into the sand, cementing the sand and creating sandstone. There was an uplifting of land and the sea drained away, leaving the rivers to carve the sandstone into the dramatic canyons now found throughout southern Utah.