Establishment of the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument
September 18, 1996
By the President of the United States of America
A Proclamation
The Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument's vast and austere landscape
embraces a spectacular array of scientific and historic resources. This high, rugged, and remote
region, where bold plateaus and multi-hued cliffs run for distances that defy human perspective,
was the last place in the continental United States to be mapped. Even today, this unspoiled
natural area remains a frontier, a quality that greatly enhances the monument's value for scientific
study. The monument has a long and dignified human history: it is a place where one can see how
nature shapes human endeavors in the American West, where distance and aridity have been
pitted against our dreams and courage. The monument presents exemplary opportunities for
geologists, paleontologists, archeologists, historians, and biologists.
The monument is a geologic treasure of clearly exposed stratigraphy and structures.
The sedimentary rock layers are relatively undeformed and unobscured by vegetation, offering a
clear view to understanding the processes of the earth's formation. A wide variety of formations,
some in brilliant colors, have been exposed by millennia of erosion. The monument contains
significant portions of a vast geologic stairway, named the Grand Staircase by pioneering
geologist Clarence Dutton, which rises 5,500 feet to the rim of Bryce Canyon in an unbroken
sequence of great cliffs and plateaus. The monument includes the rugged canyon country of the
upper Paria Canyon system, major components of the White and Vermilion Cliffs and associated
benches, and the Kaiparowits Plateau. That Plateau encompasses about 1,600 square miles of
sedimentary rock and consists of successive south-to-north ascending plateaus or benches, deeply
cut by steep-walled canyons. Naturally burning coal seams have scorched the tops of the Burning
Hills brick-red. Another prominent geological feature of the plateau is the East Kaibab Monocline,
known as the Cockscomb. The monument also includes the spectacular Circle Cliffs and part of
the Waterpocket Fold, the inclusion of which completes the protection of this geologic feature
begun with the establishment of Capitol Reef National Monument in 1938 (Proclamation No.
2246, 50 Stat. 1856). The monument holds many arches and natural bridges, including the 130-
foot-high Escalante Natural Bridge, with a 100 foot span, and Grosvenor Arch, a rare "double
arch." The upper Escalante Canyons, in the northeastern reaches of the monument, are distinctive:
in addition to several major arches and natural bridges, vivid geological features are laid bare in
narrow, serpentine canyons, where erosion has exposed sandstone and shale deposits in shades of
red, maroon, chocolate, tan, gray, and white. Such diverse objects make the monument
outstanding for purposes of geologic study.
The monument includes world class paleontological sites. The Circle Cliffs reveal
remarkable specimens of petrified wood, such as large unbroken logs exceeding 30 feet in length.
The thickness, continuity and broad temporal distribution of the Kaiparowits Plateau's
stratigraphy provide significant opportunities to study the paleontology of the late Cretaceous
Era. Extremely significant fossils, including marine and brackish water mollusks, turtles,
crocodilians, lizards, dinosaurs, fishes, and mammals, have been recovered from the Dakota,
Tropic Shale and Wahweap Formations, and the Tibbet Canyon, Smoky Hollow and John Henry
members of the Straight Cliffs Formation. Within the monument, these formations have produced
the only evidence in our hemisphere of terrestrial vertebrate fauna, including mammals, of the
Cenomanian-Santonian ages. This sequence of rocks, including the overlaying Wahweap and
Kaiparowits formations, contains one of the best and most continuous records of Late Cretaceous
terrestrial life in the world.
Archeological inventories carried out to date show extensive use of places within the
monument by ancient Native American cultures. The area was a contact point for the Anasazi and
Fremont cultures, and the evidence of this mingling provides a significant opportunity for
archeological study. The cultural resources discovered so far in the monument are outstanding in
their variety of cultural affiliation, type and distribution. Hundreds of recorded sites include rock
art panels, occupation sites, campsites and granaries. Many more undocumented sites that exist
within the monument are of significant scientific and historic value worthy of preservation for
future study.
The monument is rich in human history. In addition to occupations by the Anasazi and
Fremont cultures, the area has been used by modern tribal groups, including the Southern Paiute
and Navajo. John Wesley Powell's expedition did initial mapping and scientific field work in the
area in 1872. Early Mormon pioneers left many historic objects, including trails, inscriptions,
ghost towns such as the Old Paria townsite, rock houses, and cowboy line camps, and built and
traversed the renowned Hole-in-the-Rock Trail as part of their epic colonization efforts. Sixty
miles of the Trail lie within the monument, as does Dance Hall Rock, used by intrepid Mormon
pioneers and now a National Historic Site.
Spanning five life zones from low-lying desert to coniferous forest, with scarce and
scattered water sources, the monument is an outstanding biological resource. Remoteness, limited
travel corridors and low visitation have all helped to preserve intact the monument's important
ecological values. The blending of warm and cold desert floras, along with the high number of
endemic species, place this area in the heart of perhaps the richest floristic region in the
Intermountain West. It contains an abundance of unique, isolated communities such as hanging
gardens, tinajas, and rock crevice, canyon bottom, and dunal pocket communities, which have
provided refugia for many ancient plant species for millennia. Geologic uplift with minimal
deformation and subsequent downcutting by streams have exposed large expanses of a variety of
geologic strata, each with unique physical and chemical characteristics. These strata are the parent
material for a spectacular array of unusual and diverse soils that support many different vegetative
communities and numerous types of endemic plants and their pollinators. This presents an
extraordinary opportunity to study plant speciation and community dynamics independent of
climatic variables. The monument contains an extraordinary number of areas of relict vegetation,
many of which have existed since the Pleistocene, where natural processes continue unaltered by
man. These include relict grasslands, of which No Mans Mesa is an outstanding example, and
pinon-juniper communities containing trees up to 1,400 years old. As witnesses to the past, these
relict areas establish a baseline against which to measure changes in community dynamics and
biogeochemical cycles in areas impacted by human activity. Most of the ecological communities
contained in the monument have low resistance to, and slow recovery from, disturbance. Fragile
cryptobiotic crusts, themselves of significant biological interest, play a critical role throughout the
monument, stabilizing the highly erodible desert soils and providing nutrients to plants. An
abundance of packrat middens provides insight into the vegetation and climate of the past 25,000
years and furnishes context for studies of evolution and climate change. The wildlife of the
monument is characterized by a diversity of species. The monument varies greatly in elevation and
topography and is in a climatic zone where northern and southern habitat species intermingle.
Mountain lion, bear, and desert bighorn sheep roam the monument. Over 200 species of birds,
including bald eagles and peregrine falcons, are found within the area. Wildlife, including
neotropical birds, concentrate around the Paria and Escalante Rivers and other riparian corridors
within the monument.
Section 2 of the Act of June 8, 1906 (34 Stat. 225, 16 U.S.C. 431) authorizes the
President, in his discretion, to declare by public proclamation historic landmarks, historic and
prehistoric structures, and other objects of historic or scientific interest that are situated upon the
lands owned or controlled by the Government of the United States to be national monuments, and
to reserve as a part thereof parcels of land, the limits of which in all cases shall be confined to the
smallest area compatible with the proper care and management of the objects to be protected.
NOW, THEREFORE, I, WILLIAM J. CLINTON, President of the United States of
America, by the authority vested in me by section 2 of the Act of June 8, 1906 (34 Stat. 225, 16
U.S.C. 431), do proclaim that there are hereby set apart and reserved as the Grand Staircase-
Escalante National Monument, for the purpose of protecting the objects identified above, all lands
and interests in lands owned or controlled by the United States within the boundaries of the area
described on the document entitled "Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument" attached to
and forming a part of this proclamation. The Federal land and interests in land reserved consist of
approximately 1.7 million acres, which is the smallest area compatible with the proper care and
management of the objects to be protected.
All Federal lands and interests in lands within the boundaries of this monument are
hereby appropriated and withdrawn from entry, location, selection, sale, leasing, or other
disposition under the public land laws, other than by exchange that furthers the protective
purposes of the monument. Lands and interests in lands not owned by the United States shall be
reserved as a part of the monument upon acquisition of title thereto by the United States.
The establishment of this monument is subject to valid existing rights.
Nothing in this proclamation shall be deemed to diminish the responsibility and
authority of the State of Utah for management of fish and wildlife, including regulation of hunting
and fishing, on Federal lands within the monument.
Nothing in this proclamation shall be deemed to affect existing permits or leases for, or
levels of, livestock grazing on Federal lands within the monument; existing grazing uses shall
continue to be governed by applicable laws and regulations other than this proclamation.
Nothing in this proclamation shall be deemed to revoke any existing withdrawal,
reservation, or appropriation; however, the national monument shall be the dominant reservation.
The Secretary of the Interior shall manage the monument through the Bureau of Land
Management, pursuant to applicable legal authorities, to implement the purposes of this
proclamation. The Secretary of the Interior shall prepare, within 3 years of this date, a
management plan for this monument, and shall promulgate such regulations for its management as
he deems appropriate. This proclamation does not reserve water as a matter of Federal law. I
direct the Secretary to address in the management plan the extent to which water is necessary for
the proper care and management of the objects of this monument and the extent to which further
action may be necessary pursuant to Federal or State law to assure the availability of water.
Warning is hereby given to all unauthorized persons not to appropriate, injure, destroy,
or remove any feature of this monument and not to locate or settle upon any of the lands thereof.
IN WITNESS WHEREOF, I have hereunto set my hand this eighteenth day of
September, in the year of our Lord nineteen hundred and ninety-six, and of the Independence of
the United States of America the two hundred and twenty-first.