box canyon

• box-canyon

box canyon (plural box canyons)

1. A canyon which has a single access for entrance and exit, being otherwise enclosed on all sides by steep walls.
   • 1912, Jack London, chapter 2, in Smoke Bellew:

     The Box Canyon was adequately named. It was a box, a trap.

   • 1917, Zane Grey, chapter 6, in Wildfire:

     For days he camped on Wildfire's trail, always relentlessly driving him, always watching for the trap he hoped to find. . . . Sooner or later Wildfire would go down into a high-walled wash, from which there would be no outlet; or he would wander into a box-canyon.

   • 2005 July 3, Alison Berkley, “In Telluride, the Skis Are Stowed, but Good Times Aren't”, in New York Times, retrieved 16 January 2014:

     Highway 145 dead-ends on the east end of Telluride, where a box canyon affords no further passage.

• “box canyon”, in OneLook Dictionary Search.