Frozen Tracks: Monument Restoration and the Fate of the Upper Paria
The Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument was designated in 1996, with its original size encompassing 1,880,461 acres. President Bill Clinton famously signed the proclamation on the South Rim of the Grand Canyon, several miles and a state away from the southern border of the new monument, an act seen by many local Utahns as cowardly, a slap in the face, and more proof that only outsiders wanted this land to hold monument status. A little over 20 years later, Trump pleased these same folks by reducing the size of the monument by about half. Now many who lamented the shrinking—locals and nonlocals alike—are anticipating President Joe Biden’s restoration of the monument to its original size. On his first day, he signed an executive order for the review of the monument boundaries. With all of this in mind, I decided to walk through an area that could be affected by whatever Biden decides to do to see if there was a story inherent in the place itself, one separate from the political division that accounts for most monument discussions.
