Castleton Tower

Quality 0.50 · 0 views · Updated 2 months ago

Summit in Castle Valley, Utah, US

title: "Castleton Tower" type: doc version: 1 created: 2026-02-28 author: "Wikipedia contributors" status: active scope: public tags: ["mountains-of-utah", "climbing-areas-of-utah", "landforms-of-grand-county,-utah", "protected-areas-of-grand-county,-utah"] description: "Summit in Castle Valley, Utah, US" topic_path: "general/mountains-of-utah" source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Castleton_Tower" license: "CC BY-SA 4.0" wikipedia_page_id: 0 wikipedia_revision_id: 0

::summary Summit in Castle Valley, Utah, US ::

::data[format=table title="Infobox mountain"]

Field	Value
name	Castle Rock
photo	Castleton_Tower.jpg
photo_caption	South Face of Castle Rock viewed from the approach. In the background to the left is a rock formation commonly known as The Priest and Nuns.
elevation	6660 ft
elevation_ref
prominence_ft	1496
prominence_ref
location	Grand County, Utah, U.S.
map	USA Utah
map_caption	none
map_size	210
label_position	left
coordinates
coordinates_ref
topo	Fisher Towers
::

Castleton Tower (officially, Castle Rock) is a 6660 ft summit on the northeastern border of Castle Valley, Utah. The Wingate Sandstone tower itself is 400 ft high and stands on a 1000 ft Moenkopi-Chinle cone. Castleton Tower is a popular subject for photography and for its classic rock climbing routes, the most famous of which is the Kor-Ingalls Route featured in Fifty Classic Climbs of North America. It can be accessed by a trail that begins south of the tower at a primitive camp ground.

Location

::figure[src="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c8/Base_of_Castleton_Tower.jpg" caption="The base of Castleton Tower viewed from ridge on the standard approach. This vantage is between The Rectory and the Tower looking south at the Tower's north face."] ::

Castleton Tower sits at the southern terminus of a ridge made mostly of red sand, gravel, scatter boulders, and few short cliff lines. The ridge runs north to south for about 2800 ft at its high point. Castleton Tower, with an area of about 40 by shares the ridge with the Rectory at the ridge's northern terminus with a similar height but considerably larger area of about 200 by. This second structure is also referred to as the Priest and Nuns although those names are more often applied to specific structures connected to or contained in the Rectory. The nearest town is Moab, Utah about 10 mi to the southwest and the area is generally accessed from Castleton Road off of Route 128 which runs along the Colorado River between I-70 and Route 191. The La Sal Range and the Manti-La Sal National Forest is visible to the Southeast, The Fisher Towers are visible to the Northeast, and the Colorado River with its associated cliffs lies to the Castleton 's Northwest.

Ascent History

Among the most popular rock climbing destinations in the world, Castleton Tower has been summitted by thousands. Climbing historian Stewart Green reports that the number of successful ascents is over 40,000 and there have been so many that "no one really knows how many folks have reached the summit." The first ascent was completed September 16, 1961 by Layton Kor and Huntley Ingalls. Their route of ascent is still one of the most popular and carries their name, the Kor-Ingalls Route, and is rated 5.9. Today there are named routes of ascent on every aspect of the tower.

In 1964 and again in 1973, the tower was the location for two Chevrolet TV commercials. For both ads a car (along with a female model) was lifted to the summit in several sections using helicopters. The vehicle was then reassembled, filmed by a chopper crew, then disassembled and removed (including the model).

Preservation

Much of the land in Castle Valley is or has been owned by Utah's School and Institutional Trust Lands Administration (SITLA). The SITLA is a state land trust which auctions and leases lands to private interests in order to fund Utah schools and related state institutions. In the spring of 1999 SITLA auctioned off one or two parcels of land extending to between 60 acre and 120 acre, depending on the referenced report. The land initially went to an Aspen, Colorado land-developer with a local partner who planned to subdivide the land creating lots for residential housing. This plan would have eliminated the Tower's camping ground and reduced recreational access to the Tower's base. In response the Castle Rock Collaboration (CRC) formed to prevent commercial development. Over the next two years the CRC, Utah Open Lands Conservation Association, a non-profit land trust and partners were able to raise the money necessary to purchase the land initially bought by the developers and then work with SITLA to secure more land as open space. Thus far 221 acre of the land that encompasses the base of the Tower, including the primitive Climber's Campground, have been protected and is now owned and managed by the Utah Open Lands. Please contact Utah Open Lands for more information as needed.

::figure[src="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/15/Castleton_Tower_Panorama.jpg" caption="360° panorama taken from the top of Castleton Tower."] ::

References

{{cite peakbagger
{{cite gnis
{{Fifty Classic Climbs
"Commercial Atop Castleton".
"50th Anniversary of First Ascent of Castleton".
"1964 Chevy Impala Commercial -HD BEST Quality Utah -Castleton Tower aka Castle Rock".
Drake, Ron. (February 3, 2022). "Chevy: Like a (Castle) Rock". The Times-Independent.
(February 17, 2003). "Conservation pays off in a desert town". High Country News.
Williams, Terry Tempest. "Engagement". Orion Magazine.
"Castleton Tower Preserve {{!}} Utah Open Lands".

::callout[type=info title="Wikipedia Source"] This article was imported from Wikipedia and is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Content has been adapted to SurfDoc format. Original contributors can be found on the article history page. ::