First it was Utah powder, then the red-rock spendor of the state's canyonlands. Now, another well-kept state secret has bitten the dust - the magnificent desolation of the Escalante plateau.
There is a certain irony, noticed perhaps most by the locals who opposed President Clinton's ambush designation of the 1.7 million-acre Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument, in that efforts to protect the land have resulted in attracting attention to it.Visitors to the monument - which for years had been little more than the private back yards and grazing grounds of locals - began increasing significantly this spring.
The visitor count at the Bureau of Land Management offices in Escalante more than doubled in March, jumping from 1,071 last year to 2,254 this year. Numbers are up for April as well, a BLM official said.
Nearby Anasazi State Park in Boulder saw a 33 percent increase in visitors in March and the nearby Boulder Mountain Lodge a 20 percent increase.
"I figured business would increase," said lodge owner Mark Austin, "but maybe only about 10 percent."
Austin's recent guests included a pair of National Geographic photographers who have come to shoot the new monument for the December issue of the magazine.
On the same day, at the Prospector Lodge in Escalante, a group of government officials and scientists were registered. They have come to study the area.
"We really don't know a lot about this place. There's not a lot of roads in it, or maps of it," said Rob Hellie of the U.S. Geological Survey.
He said the area around Escalante was among the last places in the United States to be mapped.
Harriet Priska, director of Escalante's Chamber of Commerce, said inquiries about the area have doubled.
She and her husband, Philip, moved here in 1991 from California. As owners of an Escalante art gallery and antique shop, the increase in tourists means more business for the Priskas.
But the pair, in deference to some of their neighbors, are hesitant to express much enthusiasm about the monument designation. "There are a lot of unhappy people here because of this monument thing," said Philip Priska.
Billie Jones, owner, hostess and chief cook of the Burr Trail Cafe on the edge of Boulder, said she recently had 100 people squeezed into her tiny restaurant.
She sees the increase in business as more of an omen than a blessing.
First off, she's worried about what the monument will mean to her rancher friends who run stock on BLM lands. And she's afraid that the tourists might bring with them the bane of small-town eateries: a McDonald's.
"I can't compete with a fast-food place like that," said Jones.
Jones isn't alone in her concerns. BLM Escalante area manager Greg Christensen, who oversees the northern end of the monument, said ranchers who hold grazing permits are the "most scared bunch."
And probably with cause, he said.
Mining has never been too lucrative, since coal reserves are hard to get to and harder to extract. And timber isn't much of an issue, since there aren't many trees.
But cows are another issue.
Christensen said approximately 7,000 of them now graze in the Escalante area of the monument. And although grazing continues to be allowed, Christensen said the BLM is now taking a harder look at permits and grazing practices.
"These permits were once very valuable," said former rancher Paul Hansen, who sold his ranch and permits a number of years ago.
But it's Hansen's contention that the "environmentalists" are the ones doing the most damage to the area.
"If they were real environmentalists, they'd not bring attention to this place. It's the attention that's going to bring the people. And people will do a lot more damage in the long run than the cows ever did," said Hansen.
But lodge owner Austin contends the people were coming anyway.
"We just came here because we had heard how spectacular the place was," said Ken Winkes, a schoolteacher.
Austin said tourism has been on the increase ever since the state paved U-12 between Boulder and Torrey a dozen years ago.
New lodging facilities, restaurants, the four-lane road through Escalante and several other businesses, including outfitters, were all built before President Clinton invoked the Antiquities Act last September and established the monument.
"Still," said Priska's husband, "Whatever you think about Clinton - and personally I don't care for him - he put Escalante on the map."