Travel Photography > Great Basin > Escalante, Utah

In 1996, the White House proclaimed eight percent of Utah a National Monument, the second highest level of environmental protection in the United States. The protection would displace 144,000 sheep and 26,000 cattle. The town of Escalante wore black, people cried. Protested.

But unlike what the papers were saying, the whole affair wasn't as simple as Federal Government exercising its control over the state; it was the end product of dozens of years of work, thousands of people's dedication and hard-efforts. The goal of making Escalante a National Monument began in the early twentieth century - it had been shelved in 1938. Even back then, overgrazing was ruining the canyons; silting the floodways.

Protection of Escalante isn't a political issue; it's a natural question of the weight of jobs versus the environment. Anyone can tell you the future of salmon, or whales, or owls squishes the cry of "but my job!" Anybody can get a new job (and jobs in Escalante were subsidized by socialized land - grazing land was on loan), but the structure of ecology is permanent. Now, the sparse tourism is growing the communities, surpassing the value of the sheep, or the cows.

Granddaughter apologizes for my quesadilla. It was the best quesadilla I ever had.

And then I left, to pass through Zion, Kanab, Treachery (One slice, pastrami, thick). The Paria Canyon, a major drainage into the Grand Canyon, is singularly treacherous as most of Southern Utah's rain ends up passing through here. If Bryce is watered on, Paria's narrows receive a wall of water, killing everything in site.

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