Dixie Days Festival

The name comes from the history. In October 1861, Brigham Young called upon a group of LDS settlers to establish a cotton-growing community in the warm valleys of what is now Washington County, Utah, and the people who answered gave southern Utah its enduring nickname: Utah’s Dixie. St. George, the regional center that grew from those early settlements, has carried that history forward in Dixie Days, an annual multi-season celebration that opens on April 25 at Utah Tech University and culminates on September 20 at Vernon Worthen Park. What begins as a kite festival ends as a community fair, with a full summer of events woven through the calendar between those two anchor dates.

The opening event, the Dixie Power Kite Festival, takes place at Utah Tech University’s Encampment Mall on April 25, 2026, from 10:00 AM to 7:00 PM. The image of a field of kites over the red rock plateau has a particular quality in the southern Utah light, and the event draws participants who take kite flying with the kind of seriousness it rarely receives elsewhere. Live entertainment and family programming run throughout the day on the campus grounds. Through the summer, the Dixie Round-Up Rodeo brings professional rodeo competition to St. George, one of the more reliably authentic Western rodeo experiences in the Utah corridor between Las Vegas and Salt Lake City. The September 20 culminating festival at Vernon Worthen Park covers a 4K run, a farmers market with local produce and artisan goods, live entertainment, a petting zoo, tractor rides, bouncy houses, and a pickleball tournament, all within the walkable footprint of one of St. George’s best-maintained public parks.

The St. George Setting

St. George sits in a bowl of red rock at 2,880 feet elevation, warm enough in summer to have given southern Utah its cotton-country reputation but mild enough in spring and fall to make extended outdoor events genuinely comfortable. The city is the hub for a region that encompasses Zion National Park to the northeast, Bryce Canyon roughly 80 miles north on Highway 89, Snow Canyon State Park on the city’s western edge, and Sand Hollow State Park to the east, where a red-rock reservoir offers unexpected lake recreation in what most travelers assume is unbroken desert. The Encampment Mall at Utah Tech University provides a flat, open venue appropriate for the kite festival’s aerial dynamics, and Vernon Worthen Park’s mature tree canopy makes the September finale event manageable even in the heat of a southern Utah early autumn.

> Good to Know
> April in St. George typically delivers conditions that could not be improved upon for outdoor events: daytime highs in the mid-70s, reliable sun, and evenings that cool into the 50s quickly after sunset. The kite festival at Utah Tech benefits from the afternoon breeze that develops across the Encampment Mall as temperatures climb. Bring a chair and expect to stay longer than planned.

The Lake Country South and East of the City

Two water destinations anchor the broader Dixie Days travel itinerary. Sand Hollow State Park, about eight miles east of St. George off SR-9, presents a reservoir of considerable visual drama in a red-rock basin. Paddleboard and kayak rentals operate from the park’s concession during the spring and summer months, and the swimming beach area provides the kind of managed waterfront access that families with young children appreciate. Further east, approximately 55 miles via US-89, Lake Powell extends the water dimension of a southern Utah trip into the canyon country proper, where the reservoir’s 254-foot-deep blue water meets the Glen Canyon sandstone walls in a geography that is genuinely unlike any other lake experience in North America.

For visitors who want a lakeside base in the broader Utah lake country, the Utah County Lake View Retreat on Lake.com offers a property that keeps the mountains and water central to the stay.

> If You’re Going With Kids
> Snow Canyon State Park, seven miles northwest of St. George on SR-18, has a junior ranger program and interpretive trails appropriate for children ages 4 and up that cover the park’s cinder cones, lava tubes, and ancient sand dunes. The park’s lower trails are stroller-accessible, and the spring wildflower season peaks in late April, making a Snow Canyon visit a strong addition to the kite festival day for families arriving with younger children.

Find Your Spot on Lake.com

Search Lake.com for vacation rentals in St. George and the Washington County area to find properties within reach of both the Dixie Days venues and the canyon country parks that surround the city. Spring and fall bookings near St. George fill faster than summer in recent years, as travelers discover that April and September are the region’s most genuinely comfortable seasons.