Names of San Uan County

Land of Contrast, Land of Change NAMESOF SAN UAN COUNTY n 1934, Everett Ruess, a twenty-year-old vagabond philosopher, made his third visit in as many years to the geographic wonderland of northern Arizona and southern Utah. His intense love for the land's beauty caused him to pen some of the most lyrical poetry of the soul, describing mountain and desert through the eyes of an artist. That June, he sat upon Navajo Mountain and tried to describe his feelings towards the landscape: The perfection of this place is one reason why I distrust ever returning to the cities. Here I wander in beauty and perfection. There one walks in the midst of ugliness and mistakes. The beauty of this country is becoming a part of me. I feel more detached from life and somehow gentler. I have some good friends here, but no one really understands why I am here or what I do.' Five months later, he disappeared forever in the wilderness near Escalante, Utah, a victim of the land he loved. Ruess's vision of this part of the world and his mysterious death encapsulate a dichotomy, an irony that pervades the region. Call it a love-hate relationship, contrasting elements, or opposition in all things, but in this land so filled with promise of growth, wealth, and new life there also abounds dramatic possibilities of destruction, poverty, and death. Success may be temporary and illusory, giving rise to a boom that will be followed by a bust of equal or greater pro- portion. The only thing a person can count on is that the land will eventually render an accounting of the natural and human activities that play across its features. In no place is this more true than in San Juan County, Utah. Nestled in the southeastern corner of the state, where Colorado, New Mexico, and Arizona join with Utah to form the Four Corners area, this land offers dramatic evidence of nature's ceaseless efforts to shape and change the earth's surface. Wind, water, temperature, and chemical activity have combined to flake, crack, scour, melt, and create some of the most picturesque scenery in the world. Lone sandstone spires protrude from a desert floor; a roiling, silt-laden river courses through a narrow floodplain before passing between canyon walls hundreds of feet high; cedar-covered mesas give way first to ponderosa pine, next aspen, and finally the naked rocks of a tower- ing peak, while grass- and sagebrush-clad plateaus serve as home to herds of sheep and cattle. The land is as diverse as the geological pre- history that helped to create it. San Juan County lies in the Canyonlands portion of the Colorado Plateau, in what is known as the Upper Sonoran ecological zone. It is high desert country, ranging through an elevation of 4,000 to 6,000 feet. But that is an average. The highest peak in the county, Mount Peale in the La Sals, stands at an elevation of 12,700 feet, while Abajo Peak on Blue Mountain reaches 11,360 feet. If a person traveled to the top of Abajo Peak from Monument Valley (4,900 feet) that person would experience approximately 6,500 feet of elevation change in two hours. He or she also would have traveled through five different ecological zones, starting in the lower eleva- tions with blackbrush, ricegrass, sagebrush, juniper, and pinyon (Upper Sonoran), next ponderosa pine (Transition), on to Douglas fir and quaking aspen (Canadian), spruce and fir (Hudsonian), and finally, above timberline, the small mat-like plants and lichens of the THEGEOGRAPHY AND PLACENAMES OF SANJUAN COUNTY 9 Alpine Tundra Zone.' The view, once one reached this height, would be of a land filled with deserts, canyons, and mountains so diverse that contrast appears to be its only unifying theme. Consider what this is all built upon-its rock formations. Underlying San Juan County are vast stretches of sandstone and limestone beds resting in horizontal layers that tilt slightly north. The development of these strata started four and a half billion years ago during the Precambrian period. Geologists have identified a series of succeeding periods, all of which added variety in color and texture to the different layers of stone and shale beneath. As the Pacific Ocean, inland seas, jungle plants, and animal life evolved through eons of time, these elements came under the physical and chemical forces of evaporation, lifting, faulting, erosion, and volcanic activity to form a colorful and varied landscape.' The principal constant over the thousands, millions, and billions of years was inexorable change. The layered deposits held various elements that would greatly affect human beings. For instance, the forces of nature created Spanish, Lisbon, and Big Indian valleys by either pushing down or eroding away the less stable salt deposits underlying those depres- sions. Streams and swamps helped form the Chinle and Morrison layers which, between the two, contain uranium, vanadium, copper, petrified wood, fossils, and dinosaur bones. Unexplored coal deposits lie east of Monticello, oil wells pump their valuable liquid out of the land south of La Sal and in the southeast corner of the county, while small amounts of gold and silver are present in the mountains and in the streams that flow from them. One of the newest uses of this oldest resource-the land-comes from the ever-expanding tourist industry, as thousands of people flock each year to view the sandstone plateaus, mesas, and monoliths of canyon country. Nature began the process hundreds of millions of years ago by providing wind, water, sand, and pressure to form the large blocks of stone compacted during the Paleozoic era. Lateral forces squeezed Elk Ridge and Comb Ridge from the desert floor; erosion then washed and blew away material surrounding the exposed edges of the uplifts to create a knifelike rim. The desert lands in the southern third of the county also were uplifted when faulting rejuvenated the area west of Bluff, a region extending all the way to Blue (Abajo) Mountain, one of the most prominent landmarks in the county. Showing on the right side of the mountain is the "horse head," formed by trees and open areas. (San Juan Historical Commission) Monument Valley, while the land to the east remained unchanged as an old age desert. After millions of years, the land and its rock formations reveal the continuing effects of differential erosion caused by exfoliation, wind, and water on the surfaces of varying degrees of hardness. Strange shapes tantalize the imagination and beckon cam- era-laden tourists. Equally attractive are the reddish hues derived from iron oxide in the sandstone, and the black streaks, called desert varnish, from manganese oxide. Today, Canyonlands National Park, Dead Horse Point, Valley of the Gods, Monument Valley's Navajo Tribal Park, Natural Bridges National Monument, and Rainbow Bridge National Monument hold just a few of the spectacular forms and colors spread throughout the county's 7,884 square miles. Yet nothing stands as a greater testament to the change and variety found here than the three large laccolithic intrusions known as Blue (or Abajo), La Sal, and Navajo mountains. Formed an estimated average of twenty-four million years ago, these mountains slowly bulged upward as magma from beneath pushed the sandstone strata THEGEOGRAPHY AND PLACENAMES OF SANJUAN COUNTY 11 above. Erosion later exposed the subsurface igneous rock. Based on the amount of remaining uneroded sandstone on top, geologists believe that Navajo Mountain is the latest arrival, with Blue Mountain next. The La Sal Range is the senior citizen of the three because it boasts the least amount of sedimentary rock. These mountains, in addition to their mineral and plant wealth, provide something of even greater value-water, the bond between life and death, settlement and abandonment. It is no exaggeration to say that what has or has not been used or developed in the county depends to a large extent on that location's relation to water. Without this resource, no people can remain. There are three major sources of water in the county, all of which are affected in one way or another by the mountains. The first and most important is the moisture that comes from the winter snows or the summer thermal currents formed by heated desert air pushed upward to cool and fall as rain on the peaks. Billowing thunderheads, marble-sized hail, and zigzag lightning testify of both life-giving power and destructive force. Residents of San Juan County-whether Anasazi, Ute, Navajo, or Anglo-have looked to the mountains and the waters that come from them as a necessity to sustain life. A second source of water is the creeks, intermittent and peren- nial streams, and rivers that flow through red rock country. Dozens of small tributaries pour off the mountains each spring, swelling the waters of the Colorado River as it meets the Green in Canyonlands National Park, or the San Juan River moving westward to Lake Powell. Known as "exotic" rivers because their major source lies out- side of the dry land through which they run, these bodies of water push heavy loads of pebbles, rocks, and boulders; carry large sus- pended loads of clay, silt, and sand; and transport dissolved loads of minerals. As rain, snow, and irrigation waters pass over the land, they accumulate more salts and other minerals, making the water less desirable for human use. Farming settlements had to make the choice of either staying by the San Juan River, whose water originates in the San Juan Mountains of Colorado, or moving to the base of the Blue or La Sal mountains in order to utilize their water.

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