VERNAL

city, seat (1880) of Uintah county, northeastern Utah, U.S. The city lies along Ashley Creek, a small tributary of the Green River, and is located 180 miles (290 km) east-southeast of Salt Lake City, at an elevation of 5,322 feet (1,622 m) in an area of geologic and fossil interest. Settled in the 1870s as Ashley Center (for the fur trader William H. Ashley), it was incorporated in 1879 and was renamed Vernal in 1893, implying a springlike growth (hence, progress). The settlement developed as a trading and processing centre for a ranching and dairy area and 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 east), and the Flaming Gorge National Recreation Area (40 miles 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. Pop. (1990) 6,644.