Vernal, city, seat (1880) of Uintah county, northeastern Utah, U.S. The city lies along Ashley Creek, a small tributary of Green River, and is located 180 miles (290 km) east-southeast of Salt Lake City, at an elevation of 5,322 feet (1,622 metres) in an area of geologic and fossil interest. Settled in 1878 as Ashley Center (for the fur trader William H. Ashley), it was renamed Vernal in 1893, implying a springlike growth (hence, progress).
The Vernal area experienced a boom with the discovery of gold and other minerals and metals in the 1890s, which in turn attracted outlaws such as Butch Cassidy and his Wild Bunch, who maintained a headquarters nearby. When the mining boom and its associated outlawry drew to an end later in the decade, Vernal developed as a trading and processing centre for a ranching and dairy area. It later became a tourist centre for the High Uintas Primitive Area within Ashley National Forest (which lies to the northwest and is headquartered at Vernal), the Dinosaur National Monument (12 miles [19 km] east), and the Flaming Gorge National Recreation Area (40 miles [64 km] north). The hub of Utah’s “Dinosaurland,” it is the site of the Utah Field House of Natural History and hosts a summer art festival; the Dinosaur Roundup Rodeo (July) and a quarter horse show and race (June) are also held there. The Uintah and Ouray Indian Reservation and its Hill Creek Extension lie just to the west and south of Vernal. Aside from livestock farming, the locality has mining (gilsonite, oil, oil shale, phosphate rock, and natural gas) and lumbering. The Mormon church dedicated a temple in Vernal in 1997. Inc. 1879. Pop. (2000) 7,714; (2010) 9,089.