The
Colorado Plateau is a physiographic province encompassing
130,000 square miles of the Four Corners states, including
Utah's southeastern quarter. Arguably, it is the least-tamed
country remaining in the lower forty-eight states.
It is a land of outstanding natural beauty and ecological
diversity. The high, semi-arid region is actually a gigantic
basin studded with a variety of landforms, ranging from
5,000 to 11,000 feet in elevation. There are rugged plateaus,
slot canyons, mountains, river gorges with whitewater rapids,
the Grand Canyon, and nearly every conceivable type of desert
landscape. Rodney D. Millar and Joan Degiorgio wrote in
June 1986 in the state of Utah's proposal to designate the
region as a World Heritage Site: "It is easily the
most colorful area of comparable size on the earth."
The variety of the region extends to its life as well as
its geology. Animals and plants have adapted to the exposed
rock strata and harsh climatic conditions. Separated by
chasms, clinging to shelves of exposed rock, or making their
living in roaring rivers, they evolved into unique species
like the Colorado squawfish, a minnow that can reach nearly
six feet in length.
Through the millennia, ancient people also lived here, leaving
behind artifacts as simple as spear points 10,500 years
old and as sophisticated as the great 1,000-year-old stone
villages of the Anasazi culture. More recently Utes, Paiutes,
and Navajos moved in, and these tribes remain important
parts of the modern culture.
The first Europeans to reach the Grand Canyon section of
the Colorado Plateau were Spaniards under Garcia Lopez de
Cardenas, part of Francisco Vazquez de Coronado's quest
for the "Seven Cities of Cibola." Cardenas reached
the Hopi towns of Arizona, and then the Grand Canyon, in
1540. The next recorded visit there was on 26 June 1776
by Francisco Garces, a missionary.
The same year, an expedition led by Fathers Francisco Atanasio
Dominquez and Silvestre Velez de Escalante set out to find
a better route between the Catholic missions at Santa Fe,
New Mexico, and Monterey, California. They spent nearly
all of the period from 11 September until 7 November 1776
in what is now Utah. They failed to reach California but
discovered a valuable crossing of the Colorado River and
explored as far into Utah's interior as Utah Lake.
Traders in slaves and livestock established the Old Spanish
Trail from Santa Fe to central Utah early in the nineteenth
century. It arched around the San Rafael Reef and onto the
Wasatch Plateau. At first, it terminated around Utah Lake;
eventually, it headed south and west and reached Los Angeles--1,200
miles from Santa Fe. It was in use from at least 1813 until
the middle of the nineteenth century, when it was supplanted
by the more northern Mormon Trail.
American explorers pushed into the Colorado Plateau, often
in grave danger from the weather and hostile Native Americans.
They included members of expeditions led by Captain John
Williams Gunnison, massacred along with seven men in his
command, in central Utah by Paiutes, October 1853; John
Charles Frémont, who got lost in the snows of the
Aquarius Plateau, at the cost of one man dead, before stumbling
into Parowan in February 1854; J.N. Macomb of the Army Topographical
Engineers, 1859; and Lt. George M. Wheeler, who explored
the western and southern sections of the Grand Canyon in
1869 and 1871.
Probably the most daring expeditions were those of John
Wesley Powell. His small group of adventurers traveled the
Green and Colorado rivers in 1869, working their way through
the canyons in wooden boats. Three men tried to hike out
overland in late August 1869, shortly before the remaining
six rode the rapids out of the canyons and returned to safety;
the three were killed by Indians. Powell led another team
to explore the river canyons in 1871-72. Eventually, federal
surveys operated throughout the region.
In February 1872 Powell's photographer, E.O. Beaman, quit
the second expedition, leaving Kanab on his own photography
trip. He made his way through the Buckskin Mountains, into
Kanab Wash, and reached the Colorado River. Sometimes hiring
a helper from local ranching families but often working
alone, he hauled his heavy camera and supplies by horse
and mule, and took some of the first photographs of the
Grand Canyon. Beaman also photographed the Hopi towns.
In 1889-90, railroad promoters Robert B. Stanton and Frank
M. Brown led a foolhardy survey along the canyons of the
Green and Colorado rivers, trying to prove that a railroad
could be built through the Grand Canyon. Three men, including
Brown, drowned when their boats capsized.
Earlier, Mormons had set out in 1855 from Manti, charged
with converting the Indians and settling the region near
present-day Moab. Three months after they arrived, on 23
September 1855 Indians attacked, killing three and wounding
another. The survivors returned to Manti.
Throughout the last half of the nineteenth century, gold
miners, settlers, ranchers, missionaries, soldiers, and
outlaws pushed into the wilderness of the Colorado Plateau.
During the uranium boom of World War II through the 1950s,
prospectors gouged out mines and built tarpaper shacks in
scattered locations. Their trails still criss-cross much
of the landscape.
Today, with Interstate 70 cutting through the region and
numerous secondary roads offering easy access, the area
is a tourist's mecca of numerous parks, monuments, and wilderness
regions. Tourism, ranching, mining, and farming are some
of the main sources of income in the area.
Among the most spectacular protected areas of the Plateau
are Canyonlands, Arches, Capitol Reef, Bryce Canyon, Zion,
Grand Canyon, and Mesa Verde national parks; Rainbow Bridge,
Canyon de Chelly, Natural Bridges, and Wupatki national
monuments; Kodachrome Basin State Reserve, Deadhorse Point
State Park, and Glen Canyon National Recreation Area.
Joseph M. Bauman, Jr. |
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