Grand Staircase, Escalante National Monument, UT

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Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument covers a vast stretch of rugged, remote land in southern Utah, between the towns of Kanab, Escalante, and Boulder. Established in 1996 by President Bill Clinton under the Antiquities Act, it was the first national monument managed by the Bureau of Land Management. Its boundaries were sharply reduced in 2017 and restored in 2021, a reflection of long-running debate over how the land should be used and protected. The monument takes its name from two of its defining features. The Grand Staircase is an immense sequence of cliffs and plateaus that steps upward from the Grand Canyon region toward Bryce Canyon, exposing layer after layer of colorful sedimentary rock. The Escalante River and its tributaries have carved a maze of deep, twisting canyons and narrow slots through slickrock sandstone. In between lies the Kaiparowits Plateau, a high, dry, and isolated tableland. Visiting means quiet, open space, rough dirt roads, and few services. Hikers come for places like Calf Creek Falls, the slot canyons along Hole-in-the-Rock Road, and colorful formations such as the Toadstools. The region is also one of the richest fossil areas in North America, yielding many dinosaur discoveries from the Late Cretaceous, and it preserves rock art and other traces of Ancestral Puebloan and Fremont peoples who lived here long ago.