Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument

Vast and remote monument with canyons, fossils, and some of the least-visited backcountry in the US

Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument, designated in 1996, is the largest national monument in the lower 48 states and one of the most remote. The monument covers nearly 2,900 square kilometres of canyon country, desert plateaus, and badlands, most of it accessible only on dirt roads or on foot. Kanab serves as the western gateway, with the Kanab field office of the BLM providing maps and permits.

The monument's highlights include the Coyote Buttes (home of The Wave, one of the most photogenic sandstone formations in the Southwest), the Escalante River canyons, the Cottonwood Canyon Road, and a continuous series of viewpoints along Scenic Byway 12 to the north. Permits for The Wave are allocated by lottery months in advance. The rest of the monument is less regulated but requires a high-clearance vehicle for most of the good stuff. Spring (April–May) and autumn (September–October) are the best seasons.

things to do sight walking canyon
A story
Grand Staircase-Escalante was the last piece of the contiguous United States to be mapped. A party of US Geographical Survey explorers didn't reach the confluence of the Escalante and Colorado rivers until 1872, nearly a decade after much of the West had been surveyed. The monument's name refers to a geological staircase of sedimentary layers that climb northward from the Grand Canyon to Bryce Canyon, each step representing tens of millions of years of Earth history.

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