With much of the state taking fall breaks, Moab will be a prime destination this October. It’s a playground boom town always flush with recreators of all sorts: bikers, hikers, rafters, four wheelers. But you can only do those activities for so long before the gas tank goes empty or the calves give out. Be sure to save a little energy for a Moab après trail experience: visiting the murals and sculptures spread throughout the redrock town.

For more than two decades, one of the first things visitors to city of Moab would see was the mural by Tarry Klaaren painted on the side of Poison Spider bike shop. There are a couple more murals around town that have been up for more than a decade, like the ones on the sides of Woody’s Tavern and Milt’s burger and shake shack.

The majority of murals have gone up in the past half decade, during the mural boom that has seen municipalities of all sorts embracing and then gentrifying the once illegal street art scene. Moab Arts, which is city-funded, has facilitated many of the recent murals.

Thanks to Moab Art Trails, the town also has a thriving 3-D public art scene. Every year for the past five, the nonprofit organization has issued a national call for sculptures to be installed around the downtown area for a year. All accepted works are considered for addition to the town’s permanent public art collection. Eleven works, worth more than $90,000 have been added to the collection so far.

Below is a map of some, but by no means all, the 2- and 3-D pieces you can see within a few blocks of the intersection of Moab’s Main and Center streets. If you find others, please send them our way and we’ll add them to the map.

For more murals and public art around Utah, visit our Art Lake City map.

In Plain Site

With our In Plain Site byline we feature publicly viewable art, both official and street art, throughout the state of Utah.