South Coyote Buttes Paria Canyon Wilderness Area

Coyote Buttes is a section of the Paria Canyon-Vermilion Cliffs Wilderness managed by the Bureau of Land Management (BLM), spanning extreme South Central Utah and North Central Arizona, just south of US 89 halfway between Kanab, Utah and Page, Arizona. It is divided into two areas: Coyote Buttes North and Coyote Buttes South. Visiting either of the Coyote Buttes areas requires purchasing a hiking permit.

The Coyote Buttes area is an exposure of cross-bedded aeolian Jurassic Navajo Sandstone. The variable coloration of the sandstones is a result of various iron oxide pigments within the layers. A dinosaur trackway or trample surface is found in the area and provides evidence of a variety of dinosaurs. The area includes dramatic swirling erosional rock formations such as The Wave.

The Wave and Buckskin Gulch share the Wire Pass Trailhead on House Rock Valley Road.

The Paria Canyon-Vermilion Cliffs Wilderness is a 112,500 acres (455 km²) wilderness area located in northern Arizona and southern Utah, USA, within the arid Colorado Plateau region. The wilderness is composed of broad plateaus, tall escarpments, and deep canyons.

The Paria River flows through the wilderness before joining the Colorado River at Lee's Ferry, Arizona.

The U.S. Congress designated the wilderness area in 1984 and it was largely incorporated into the new Vermilion Cliffs National Monument proclaimed in 2000 by executive order of President Bill Clinton.

Both the wilderness area and the National Monument are administered by the federal Bureau of Land Management.

The Colorado Plateau and its river basins are of immense value in the Earth sciences, specifically chronostratigraphy, as the region contains multiple terrain features exposing miles-thick contiguous rock columns geologists and paleobiologists use as reference strata of the geologic record.