Vesta Temple

Vesta Temple is one of the named rock formations that give the South Rim's Hermit Road corridor its skyline. It stands about eight miles west-northwest of Grand Canyon Village, between Topaz Canyon and Boucher Canyon, and rises roughly 3,900 feet above the Colorado River in just 2.5 miles — a summit elevation of 6,299 feet. Like most of the canyon's named buttes and temples, it isn't a place you hike to; it's a formation you look at from the rim, its cream-colored Coconino Sandstone cliffs capped by darker Kaibab Limestone and Toroweap Formation.

Naming

Vesta Temple takes its name from the Roman goddess of hearth and home, one of dozens of formations that geologist Clarence Dutton named after mythological deities in the 1880s. The name was formally adopted by the U.S. Board on Geographic Names in 1908. Diana Temple, a taller neighboring summit, sits about a mile to the north.

• Visible from South Rim overlooks along the Hermit Road corridor, alongside other named temples and buttes in the same stretch of canyon
• Not a maintained trail or summit route — the formation itself is unclimbed by any established public path