You can get to Topaz Mountain in a car, but make sure your spare is working. Many vehicles have had flat tires in the area, especially if they have "P" rated tires. In fact, my uncle blew two tires in the same area! There were many camping trailers in the area as well. Depending on the side roads you take to get closer to Topaz Mountain, the rating can increase to a 3.
Location
Middle of nowhere in the Western Desert of Utah (see pictures). It is twelve miles south of hopeless and a few degrees north of burning to death. It's located solidly on the Meridian of Misery.
Trailhead
It is located on Brush Highway 32.6 miles west measured from the Intermountain Power Plant at the junction of Brush Highway and Jones Road. GPS coordinates are 39°39'58.4"N 113°07'29.1"W (39.666218, -113.124757).
Description
This is a short dirt road (less than 5 miles) to get to Topaz Mountain. This is a fun little mountain that has a lot of topaz that you can find. The closer you get to the mountain, the more topaz you can find. You can look for topaz and dig with hand tools without any type of permit. Most of the topaz you find is small and low quality, but occasionally you can find some nice specimens. I bet if you are patient and do some digging you will find bigger and better pieces of Topaz.
This literally is in middle of nowhere, and I wouldn't travel a long distance to come here just to go to Topaz Mountain. It might be worth it if you include the Dugway Geode beds, a site to find obsidian (Apache tears), and the trilobite beds. These are some fun areas to find some different stones. Kids usually love these areas to go looking for rocks. Since my cousin lives in the Delta, UT area, I will likely get back to these areas in the near future.
Another point of interest to see is the Topaz Internment Camp. We took dirt roads to get there because Brush Highway is a straight, boring road. This was one of the concentration camps in World War 2. It was open from September, 1942 to October, 1945. Total number interred was 11,212 and the peak population was 8,316. There were 7 guard towers and barbed-wire fences around the camp, but I doubt anybody could survive an escape attempt on foot because it is in middle of the desert. It is fun to drive around the camp and you can see the layout. I still think it is a sad day in our history that we basically imprisoned ("relocated") these people just because of their race.
All in all, it was a fun day and I can't wait to get back to go Geode, trilobite, and obsidian hunting!
Here are the GPX and KML files.
This is Topaz Mountain. There are pieces of topaz scattered everywhere!
This is the Internment Camp. I bet most were pretty depressed to get shipped here because it was so barren and dry.
This is inside the Internment Camp.
See? Middle of Nowhere.
Uh oh, now you've let the secret out about our luscious paradise. Hoards of California transplants are bound to ruin our desert Utopia. I mean, you can tell from the photo that Topaz Mountain already has more water than all of California! ;)
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