Cottonwood Road in the Paria River District is impassable for all vehicles after recent rain tore through the route, and federal land managers say they have no estimate for when it will reopen. The Bureau of Land Management is warning drivers to stay away entirely while crews work to assess the damage spread across Kane and Garfield counties in southern Utah.
“The damaged road is currently impassable for all vehicles,” the Bureau of Land Management said in its announcement, which did not specify a repair timeline. The agency is asking drivers to avoid the area until the road is fixed, and it cautioned that emergency response in the area may be significantly delayed, meaning anyone who does travel there does so at their own risk. As reported by KUTV, the agency said its crews are working to restore safe access and is coordinating with Kane and Garfield counties to assess the broader damage across the Paria River District.
A Soggy October Set the Stage
The damage to Cottonwood Road didn't happen in isolation. Heavy rain and repeated storms caused widespread damage throughout southern Utah in October, according to KUTV, with water from nearby rivers and washes flooding communities, filling homes with mud, damaging bridges, and leaving several roads impassable.
The scale of that rainfall was striking. A weather system parked over southern Utah on a Wednesday and Thursday in late October, dropping enough rain to trigger flash floods across the region, the Salt Lake Tribune's coverage of the southern Utah storms found. Parts of the Escalante River basin saw up to 3.5 inches of rain in 36 hours, while Bryce Canyon City logged almost 5 inches of rain over that same stretch of two days. In Hurricane, 1 to 2 inches fell in a single hour, and the Pine Valley Mountains picked up 2 to 3 inches.
Governor Declares State of Emergency
Utah Gov. Spencer Cox has since issued a state of emergency for communities impacted by the rainstorms, per KUTV's report. The Office of the Governor said Cox signed Executive Order 2026-09 on Nov. 6, declaring a 30-day state of emergency in San Juan and Washington counties due to severe thunderstorms and flash flooding, a move that allows the state to allocate additional resources to repairs and request federal and interstate funds.
The flooding's reach became clear in the days leading up to that declaration. A chasm in Comb Wash Bridge cut off efficient travel between Bluff and Monument Valley, the Tribune's report on the state of emergency noted, describing washed-out roads and destroyed bridges across southern Utah over the two weeks before the declaration. The same report found that floodwaters in the San Juan River and surrounding soil carried E. coli levels 10 times what would normally trigger a health advisory.
A Record-Setting Month for Rain
The storms fit into a broader regional pattern. Utah, Colorado, Arizona and Nevada each ranked among their 10 wettest Octobers on record, according to a report from the National Centers for Environmental Information. Separately, the National Weather Service tracked storm-total precipitation reports beginning at 6 a.m. on Oct. 21 as the wet pattern settled over the region.
For now, Cottonwood Road remains closed to all traffic, and the BLM has given no indication of when repairs might be finished. Until then, the agency's message to the public is simple: stay out of the Paria River District route and let crews work.
