Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument
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| Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument | |
|---|---|
| IUCN Category III (Natural Monument) | |
| | |
| Location | Utah, USA |
| Nearest city | Kanab, UT |
| Coordinates | Coordinates: |
| 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 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. Visitor centers are located in Cannonville, Big Water, Escalante, and Kanab.
[edit] Paleontology
Since 2000, numerous dinosaur fossils over 75-million years old have been found at Grand Staircase-Escalante.
In 2002, a volunteer at Grand Staircase-Escalante discovered a 75-million-year-old dinosaur near the Arizona border. On October 3, 2007, the dinosaur's name, Gryposaurus monumentensis (hook-beaked lizard from the monument) was announced in the Zoological Journal of the Linnean Society. Monumentensis was at least 30 feet long and 10 feet tall, and has a powerful jaw with more than 800 teeth.[1][2]
Two ceratopsid (horned) dinosaurs, also discovered at Grand Staircase-Escalante, were introduced by the Utah Geological Survey in 2007. They were uncovered in the Wahweap formation, which is just below the Kaiparowits formation where the duckbill was extracted. They lived about 80 million or 81 million years ago. The two fossils are called the Last Chance skull and the Nipple Butte skull. They were found in 2002 and 2001, respectively.[3]
[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%.
Local county officials objected to the designation of the Monument, questioning whether the Antiquities Act allowed such vast amounts of land to be designated[citation needed]. 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.[4]
Wilderness designation for the lands in the Monument had long been sought by environmental groups; while designation of the Monument is not legally the same as Wilderness designation, for most practical purposes it is very similar. Bill Clinton significantly improved his standing with environmentalists by designating the Monument.
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.[5]
A more difficult problem is the resolution of United States 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.[6] 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
- Grosvenor Arch
- 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
- ^ Duck-billed dinosaur amazes scientists
- ^ S. Utah dinosaur had a duck-billed snout -- and 800 teeth
- ^ Utah's new dino-stars: Discoveries give clues to distant past
- ^ 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 05, 2007.
- ^ Public Law 105-335. US Government Printing Office (1998). Retrieved on March 04, 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 04, 2007.
[edit] External links
- Bureau of Land Management: Grand Staircase-Escalante NM
- Grand Staircase Escalante Partners support for public awareness, interpretive, educational, scientific, scenic, historical, and cultural activities.
Protected Areas of Utah | |
|---|---|
| National Park Service | National Parks:
Arches •
Bryce Canyon •
Canyonlands •
Capitol Reef •
Zion |
| National Forests | Ashley • Dixie • Fishlake • Manti-La Sal • Uinta • Wasatch-Cache |
| State Parks Northern Region | Antelope Island • Bear Lake • Camp Floyd • Deer Creek • East Canyon • Great Salt Lake • Historic Union Pacific Rail Trail • Jordanelle • Hyrum Lake • Red Fleet • Rockport • Starvation • Steinaker • Utah Lake • Wasatch Mountain • Willard Bay |
| State Parks Central Region | Fremont Indian • Goblin Valley • Green River • Huntington • Millsite • Palisade • Scofield • Territorial Statehouse • Yuba Lake |
| State Parks Southern Region | Anasazi Indian • Coral Pink Sand Dunes • Dead Horse Point • Edge Of The Cedars • Escalante • Goosenecks • Gunlock • Iron Mission • Kodachrome Basin • Newspaper Rock State Historic Monument • Otter Creek • Piute • Quail Creek • Sand Hollow • Snow Canyon |
| Municipal parks | Fort Buenaventura • Lost Creek Reservoir • Jordan River Parkway • Minersville Reservoir • Veterans Memorial Park • This Is The Place Heritage Park |
| Others | |
| Utah State Parks and Recreation | |
