Published July 2-3, 2000

Stories by Mike Lee
Photos by André Ranieri

Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt issued the challenge.

Look at the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument, he said. It's what a monument should be.

So the Tri-City Herald dispatched environmental reporter Mike Lee and photographer André Ranieri to southern Utah to talk with area residents and look over a chunk of its 1.9 million acres.

Opinions there are no less fractured than the Northwest's sentiments about salmon, and truth no easier to discern. It's near impossible, for instance, to distinguish between fact and something that's been said so often it starts to sound like fact, particularly to partisans. Nonetheless, the themes are clear, the sides distinct.

So here is their report on the Escalante, microcosm of our West's past, present and future.