Parunuweap Canyon carries the East Fork of the Virgin River south of Highway 9 and is closed to the public as a Research Natural Area. The first archaeological digs in Zion were made here in 1934, led by Ben Wetherill. The name has at least three published meanings, including canyon with a swift stream. The guidebook reading, roaring water, is not the best-sourced of them.
South of this highway, the East Fork of the Virgin River runs through Parunuweap Canyon. You can't go in. The stretch inside the park is closed to the public, set aside as a research natural area. Two canyons, two names. Parunuweap stayed on the map. A Paiute man named Tony Tillohash gave its meaning as water in a narrow canyon. The name on the other fork had a harder time. On September twenty-ninth, eighteen seventy-two, John Wesley Powell started down into Parunuweap. He wrote that the Indians called the North Fork's canyon Mukuntuweap, or Straight Canyon, and that one line is where the name came from. It named the monument that became Zion, then came off the map. What the word meant stayed open. William Palmer thought it might be Soap Creek, from the word for yucca. In nineteen thirty-six the park's own bulletin ended the argument, saying that since most of the Indians accurately informed on the subject were dead, it was profitless to continue the discussion. Parunuweap is still out there, past the reach of this road, with its name intact.
Photo: Powell Survey (E. O. Beaman, James Fennemore or John K. Hillers), 1871-1878; U.S. Geological Survey · CC0 (U.S. Geological Survey; NARA's copy is public domain)