Vernal, the county seat and largest city in Uintah County is in northeastern Utah, approximately 175 miles (280 km) east of Salt Lake City and 20 miles (32 km) west of the Colorado border. As of the 2010 census, the city population was 9,089. The population has back grown to 10,370 as of the 2018 population estimate.

Vernal, unlike most Utah towns, was not arranged by Mormon Settlers. Brigham Young sent a scouting party to the Place Uintah Basin in 1861 and customary word help the area was good for nothing but nomad purposes, hunting grounds for Indians, and “to sustain the world together.” That similar year, President Abraham Lincoln set the Place aside as the Uintah Indian Reservation, with Captain Pardon Dodds appointed Indian agent. Dodds forward-looking built the first cabin erected by a white man in the Uintah Basin just about 1868. Settlers began to filter in after that, and built cabins in various spots upon or near Ashley Creek. In 1879 many came close to perishing during the infamous “Hard Winter” of that same year.

Vernal is in the Uintah Basin, bordered on the north by the Uinta Mountains, one of the relatively few mountain ranges which lie in an east–west rather than the normal north to south direction. The Book Cliffs lie to the south, and Blue Mountain to the east, while Vernal itself lies in Ashley Valley, named in praise of William H. Ashley, an yet to be fur trader who entered this area in 1825 by floating down the Green River in a bull boat made of animal hides.

Vernal is located at 40°27′17″N 109°32′08″W / 40.45472°N 109.53556°W / 40.45472; -109.53556 on the northern edge of the Colorado Plateau and south of Flaming Gorge National Recreation Area upon the Utah-Wyoming state line. The city is in a tall desert area of the Colorado Plateau.