It mainly grows on the Colorado Plateau in the western United States, but is also found in a few locations in southern New Mexico and an adjacent area of Texas.

Cystopteris utahensis is a herbaceous perennial with creeping stems that are not like cords with short internodes, the sections between where leaves attach.

The underside of almost every leaf will be covered in the small round brown structures that produce spores called sori.

[2] The main shaft of leaf will have glandular hairs and often have misshapen bublets, allowing it to be distinguished from Cystopteris fragilis, a similar species found in much of the range of C.

[2] The sori on the underside of the leaves are cup shaped with an abruptly cut off end, described as a truncate apex by botanists.

[2][4] The argument for the status of C. utahensis as a separate species rests on its geographic isolation from C. tennesseensis and only having one parent in common.

[8] The five western states where Cystopteris utahensis grows are Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico, Texas, and Utah.

[7] The majority of the range for the species is in Utah and northern Arizona with only a few isolated populations known from western Colorado and New Mexico.