A special report by the Tri-City Herald

Cottonwood Road, which connects Highway 12 in Utah to the Arizona border, is among the roads targeted for closure by the Bureau of Land Management, which hopes to preserve the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument's primitive interior by limiting access to visitors.

Where there's a monument, there's money

ESCALANTE, Utah - Tom and Linda Mansell couldn't have timed it any better.

After looking for property in three dozen states to build a bed-and-breakfast, the Salt Lake City couple settled here.

The reason: The Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument.

"We decided this was the best place to get in on the ground floor," said Linda Mansell. "If they took the monument away, we would just go out of business."

Since 1998, their business has increased each year as tourists from across the country and as far away as Singapore and Switzerland tour the Southwest. Many come for the region's other natural wonders and national parks.

But they also want to see a national monument.

And the Mansells' bottom line is starting to show it. In April, their occupancy rate was three times what it was last April, and now they are talking about putting in a brew pub down the street.

Four years after the monument was created, there's still plenty of business opportunities, and Tom figures the town surrounded by federal land will someday be another vacation hot spot like Telluride, Colo., or West Yellowstone, Mont.

"You are going to have people coming in droves," Tom Mansell said. "We're laughing all the way to the bank."

New economy not hot for some

Like many towns around the West, those in Southern Utah are grudgingly trading industry for tourism - which in some cases amounts largely to showing guests the romantic side of the business that used to be.

So it's no surprise the hardscrabble life of one of the country's most remote regions is turning into a playground for outsiders. They call it eco-tourism.

When people became aware of the monument - largely through media reports about the controversy - the number of visitors jumped from roughly 600,000 to 1.1 million in four years, according to Bureau of Land Management numbers that seem inflated to some locals.

"The No. 1 thing that this has brought has been local jobs in all these communities," said Barbara Sharrow, BLM official. "It's an economic opportunity that wasn't there prior to the monument."

Now, the question seems to be whether old-timers will move quickly enough to capitalize on the monument or if newcomers will beat them out.

"The people are honest, sincere ... and they are scared stiff of what's going to happen," said Tom Mansell, an emergency response volunteer and chairman of the town's planning commission. "If they would open up their eyes and open up their minds, they would be a lot more successful."

But to many of Escalante's old-timers, tourism is a trap. It means low-paying seasonal jobs dealing with people the old-timers wish would have stayed away in the first place.

So, most of the businesses that have started in the last two or three years to take advantage of the monument - outfitters, restaurants, hotels - were started by outsiders.

"A lot of locals ... want all the money that the tourists drop without the tourists," Sharrow said. "If they could have that, they would be ecstatic. Maybe."

New approach to interpretation

Tim Clarke has a big job. He's trying to condense nearly 2 million acres into four or five visitors centers at the edges of the monument.

"Most visitors barely get out of the car," he said. "They see the landscape from the vehicle and maybe a short walk."

When it comes to visitor facilities, the BLM is taking a fresh approach here. It's using architecture to tell the stories of prehistoric peoples and long-extinct species that once roamed the monument.

"It's not just your typical National Park building that has interpretive things in it," said Clarke, a Boulder, Utah, resident who is part of the monument landscape design team. "The building itself and the landscape itself tells you something about the monument."

And the agency is putting visitors facilities in existing towns rather than in remote places where they would have to build more utilities. The BLM calls it a way to help bring business to the towns.

As for destination spots in the Grand Staircase, they are few and far between. It's not like driving over White Pass into the Cascade Range and having countless camping options, and it's even less like the Disneyland-type appeal of Yellowstone Park, where every bend in the road seems to offer unimaginable eye candy.

That's not to say the land isn't beautiful - only that it offers a handful of popular trails and swimming holes, hundreds of miles of dirt roads, remote vistas and scattered geologic formations.

It's prime territory for all kinds of scientific ventures. But with a few exceptions, there's very little outside the town in the way of tourist amenities.

"People are going to trample to death certain areas," said Stephen Steed, logging company manager. "They don't really want to be out on the Kaiparowits (Plateau) where there is no water and the gnats will literally eat you alive."

That puts Sharrow in an odd spot. She's director of visitor services for the monument - but her job isn't so much to bring visitors in as it is to keep those who do come from damaging the place. That's why the agency is closing more than 1,000 miles of roads.

"You can't manage a lot of things if you can't manage access," she said.

The monument management plan divides the land into four zones. On 65 percent of the land, the BLM provides "self-directed visitor experience without motorized or mechanized access." It other words, it's to be kept primitive. About 4 percent of the land, however, is dubbed "front country," including the serpentine Highway 12, a drive so spectacular that Car and Driver magazine named it one of the 10 best drives in the country.

That zone is where the BLM wants to keep up to 95 percent of visitors, and the agency now is implementing rules to limit environmental damage.

Campers must get a permit, and there are only two developed campsites in the front country zone. Plans call for up to 10 primitive camping areas without toilets, water or other amenities.

Climbing is to be restricted to preserve archaeological sites and raptor nesting. Day use facilities to be added include roadside exhibits, scenic pullouts and interpretive trails.

In some areas, the maximum group size is 12 people and 12 pack animals. And plans are to close roughly 1,200 miles of roads and limit off-road vehicle access.

"This is hard country," reminds Sharrow, noting that intrepid tourists who have ventured too far off existing paths have ended up lost for days in the wilderness.

Visitors center sparks opposition

The visitors center in Escalante could be extraordinary. Possibilities include a university research center, a museum and perhaps a hotel and restaurant.

But townspeople have actively opposed the center for all kinds of reasons, including the possibility that building it near the high school would give environmentalists easy access to their children.

Some also fear development would compete with existing hotels and restaurants.

Tom Mansell said that kind of thinking is small-minded.

"I'd love it," he said. "Bring it on. You are going to bring more people in here."

Even Louise Liston, a Garfield County commissioner who is no friend of the monument, wants to see the center built. She figures the university influence would benefit the town by offering distance learning classes over the Internet to residents.

She hopes it would provide jobs for students and training for the town's work force so it might attract new industry.

As for the naysayers of the monument, lodge owner Mark Austin has little sympathy.

"I am sick and tired of their sniveling and whiny attitude," he said. "As they say, they should 'cowboy up' and get back on their horse."

Austin speaks from experience. A 1992 earthquake near Zion National Park destroyed his home and left him with just a few thousand dollars. He eventually moved to Boulder, Utah, and built one of the region's premier lodges.

"I came over here and said, 'I have to adapt to a new environment. There is an opportunity here.' "

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