Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument
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| Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument | |
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| IUCN Category III (Natural Monument) | |
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| Location: | Utah, USA |
| Nearest city: | Kanab, UT |
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| Area: | 1.9 million acres (7,689 km²) |
| Established: | September 18, 1996 |
| Governing body: | U.S. Bureau of Land Management |
The Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument contains 1.9 million acres (7,571 km²) of land in southern Utah, the United States. There are three main regions: the Grand Staircase, the Kaiparowits Plateau, and the Canyons of the Escalante. President Bill Clinton designated the area as a U.S. National Monument in 1996 using his authority under the Antiquities Act.
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[edit] Geography
The Monument stretches from the towns of Big Water, Glendale and Kanab, Utah on the southwest, to the towns of Escalante and Boulder, Utah on the northeast. It is slightly larger in area than the state of Delaware.
The western part of the Monument is dominated by the Paunsaugunt Plateau and the Paria River, and is adjacent to Bryce Canyon National Park. This section shows the geologic progression of the Grand Staircase.
The center section is dominated by a single long ridge, called Kaiparowits Plateau from the west, and called Fifty-Mile Mountain when viewed from the east. Fifty-Mile Mountain stretchs southeast from the town of Escalante to the Colorado River in Glen Canyon. The eastern face of the mountain is a steep, 2200 foot (650 meter) escarpment. The western side (the Kaiparowits Plateau) is a shallow slope descending to the south and west, and is the largest roadless piece of land in the lower 48 states.
East of Fifty Mile Mountain are the Canyons of the Escalante. The Monument is bounded by Glen Canyon National Recreation Area on the east and south. The most popular hiking and backpacking area is the Canyons of the Escalante, shared with Glen Canyon NRA. Highlights include the slot canyons of Peekaboo, Spooky and Brimstone Canyons, and the backpacking areas of Coyote Gulch and Harris Wash.
The Hole-in-the-Rock road extends southeast from the town of Escalante, along the base of Fifty Mile Mountain. It is important in the history of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (the Mormon or LDS Church) and the settlements of southeast Utah, including Bluff, as well as providing access to the Canyons of the Escalante, and to the flat desert at the base of Fifty Mile Mountain that is actively used for grazing cattle.
[edit] Management
The Monument is managed by the Bureau of Land Management rather than the National Park Service. This was the first National Monument managed by the BLM.
[edit] Controversy
The Monument was declared in September, 1996 at the height of the 1996 presidential election campaign by President Bill Clinton, and was controversial from the moment of creation. The declaration ceremony was held at Grand Canyon National Park in Arizona, and not in the state of Utah. The Utah congressional delegation and state governor were notified only 24 hours in advance. This was seen by many as a transparent political ploy to gain votes in the contested state of Arizona. That November, Clinton won Arizona by a margin of 2.2%, and lost Utah to Republican Bob Dole by 21.1%.
Many people in Utah were very upset when Bill Clinton declared the Grand Staircase-Escalante area as a National Monument. The counties where the Monument is located are the most conservative part of a very conservative state, and have a long history of ranching and resource extraction. Local county officials objected long and hard to designation of the Monument, questioning whether the Antiquities Act allowed such vast amounts of land to be designated. Monument designation also nixed the Andalex Coal Mine that was proposed for a remote location on the Kaiparowitz Plateau, and promised to generate jobs for the local economy.[1]
Wilderness designation for the lands in the Monument had long been sought by environmental groups. While designation of the Monument is not the same as Wilderness designation, for most practical purposes it is very much the same. By declaring the Monument, Bill Clinton improved his standing with environmentalists nationwide.
There are contentious issues peculiar to the state of Utah. Certain plots of land were assigned when Utah became a state (in 1896) as School and Institutional Trust Lands (SITLa, a Utah state agency), to be managed to produce funds for the state school system. These lands included scattered plots in the Monument that, critics claimed, could no longer be developed for the sake of Utah's school children. The SITLa plots within the Monument were exchanged for federal lands elsewhere in Utah, plus equivalent mineral rights and $13 million dollars cash by an act of Congress supported by Democrats and Republicans, and signed into law as Public Law 105-335 on October 31, 1998.[2]
A more difficult problem is the resolution of Revised Statute 2477 (R.S. 2477) road claims. R.S. 2477 (Section 8 of the 1866 Mining Act) states: "The right-of-way for the construction of highways over public lands, not reserved for public uses, is hereby granted." The statute was repealed by the Federal Land Policy and Management Act (FLPMA) of 1976, but the repeal was subject to valid existing rights. A process for resolving disputed claims has not been established, and in 1996, the 104th Congress passed a law which prohibited Clinton-administration RS2477 proposed resolution regulations from taking effect without Congressional approval.[3] As of 2005, dirt roads in the Monument are highly disputed, with Kane County officials placing Kane County signs on roads they claim and occasionally applying bulldozers to grade claimed roads, while the BLM tries to exert control over the same roads. Resolution of this dispute is unlikely in the immediate future.
[edit] See also
- Ancient Pueblo Peoples
- Grand Staircase
- Silvestre Vélez de Escalante
- Utah Road 400 - traverses a portion of the monument
[edit] References
- Paul Larmer (editor) Give and Take: How the Clinton Administration's Public Lands Offensive Transformed the American West (High Country News Books, 2004) ISBN 0-9744485-0-8
- Bureau of Land Management, Grand Staircase-Escalante NM, Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument Management Plan (U.S. Dept. of the Interior Bureau of Land Management, 1999)
- David Urmann, Trail Guide to Grand Staircase-Escalante (Gibbs Smith, 1999) ISBN 0-87905-885-4
- Robert B. Keiter, Sarah B. George and Joro Walker (editors), Visions of the Grand Staircase-Escalante: Examining Utah's Newest National Monument (Utah Museum of Natural History and Wallace Stegner Center, 1998) ISBN 0-940378-12-4
[edit] Footnotes
- ^ Grahame, John D.; Thomas D. Sisk (2002). [http://www.cpluhna.nau.edu/Places/gsenm3.htm Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument, Utah (page 3 of 4) Coal Mining vs. Wilderness on the Kaiparowits Plateau]. Land Use History of the Colorado Plateau. Northern Arizona University. Retrieved on March 5, 2007.
- ^ Public Law 105-335. US Government Printing Office (1998). Retrieved on March 4, 2007.
- ^ Gamboa, Anthony (February 6, 2004). Recognition of R.S. 2477 Rights-of-Way under the Department of the Interior's FLPMA Disclaimer Rules and Its Memorandum of Understanding with the State of Utah, B-300912. US Government Accountability Office. Retrieved on March 4, 2007.
[edit] External links
- Bureau of Land Management: Grand Staircase-Escalante NM
- Grand Staircase Monument Travel Guide
- Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument
- Grand Staircase Escalante Partners support for public awareness, interpretive, educational, scientific, scenic, historical, and cultural activities.
- Escalante State Park
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| National Parks | Arches National Park • Bryce Canyon National Park • Canyonlands National Park • Capitol Reef National Park • Zion National Park |
| National Monuments | Cedar Breaks National Monument • Dinosaur National Monument • Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument • Hovenweep National Monument • Natural Bridges National Monument • Rainbow Bridge National Monument • Timpanogos Cave National Monument |
| State Parks Northern Region |
Antelope Island State Park • Bear Lake • Camp Floyd State Park • Deer Creek State Park • East Canyon State Park • Great Salt Lake State Park • Historic Union Pacific Rail Trail • Jordanelle State Park • Hyrum Lake State Park • Red Fleet State Park • Rockport State Park • Starvation State Park • Steinaker State Park • Utah Lake • Wasatch Mountain • Willard Bay State Park |
| State Parks Central Region |
Fremont Indian State Park • Goblin Valley State Park • Green River State Park • Huntington State Park • Millsite State Park • Palisade State Park • Scofield State Park • Territorial Statehouse • Yuba Lake State Park |
| State Parks Southern Region |
Anasazi Indian State Park • Coral Pink Sand Dunes State Park • Dead Horse Point State Park • Edge Of the Cedars State Park • Escalante State Park • Goosenecks State Park • Gunlock State Park • Iron Mission State Park • Kodachrome Basin State Park • Newspaper Rock State Historic Monument • Otter Creek State Park • Piute State Park • Quail Creek State Park • Sand Hollow State Park • Snow Canyon State Park |
| Municipal parks | Ft. Buenaventura • Lost Creek Reservoir • Jordan River Parkway • Minersville Reservoir • Veterans Memorial Park • This Is The Place Heritage Park |
