US HWY 12 is an All American Road
That’s not just a cute thing people say, it’s an actual federal designation. A scenic byway is recognized by the US Department of Transportation for having one of 6 intrinsic qualities. Those qualities are “archeological, cultural, historic, natural, recreational, and scenic”.
An All-American Road however, must have at least 2 of those qualities and contain features that don’t exist anywhere else in the United States. There are 31 All-American Roads.
Highway 12 runs 122 miles through The Grand Staircase Escalante National Monument It’s not really what you would think of as a monument - this is huge. Almost 2 million acres huge. This monument is almost twice the size of all of Utah’s 5 National Parks - or about the states of Delaware and Rhode Island combined.
It is massive.
So basically, the sediment from a prehistoric lake environment on top of a river environment, on top of a desert environment, on top of a river environment on top of an ocean environment… climbing to 9600 feet above sea level.
It’s several chapters of the Earth’s history with it’s pages slowly being turned by the forces of erosion. Rain falls on the pink cliffs, the highest point of the staircase - and it works it’s way down. It grows into flash floods quickly, that carry boulders and tree trunks violently through narrow canyons, smashing into walls and carving even deeper canyons eventually dumping into the Colorado River. The same Colorado River that carved the giant gash in the Earth big enough to be seen from space that we call The Grand Canyon. The water then freezes and cracks, splits, and weakens the exposed stone walls… and then it thaws and starts again - carrying snowmelt and more broken stone to chisel the landscape and uncover new secrets.
Highway 12, completed in 1940 by the Civilian Conservation Corps overlooks all of this.
The road is paved and well maintained. It is incredible to think about how it was made and how difficult and dangerous that must have been in an area this rugged and desolate. This is not a place people have ever come on the way to anywhere else. You have to want to get here. The land is impossibly difficult and the weather is offensive. They didn’t have air conditioning in 1940s when this road was built. The Escalante River here, in fact, is the last river to have been mapped in the United States. We mapped the rivers of Alaska before top of the Grand Staircase. That’s how remote this place is.
At one point, the road passes over the crest of Hogback Ridge. At times the road here is as narrow as the ridge itself, with very steep edges where a fall would no doubt immediately result in certain death. There’s no room for guardrails on The Hogback. This is America.
It’s hard to articulate in words, in photos, or even in video how beautiful and awe-inspiring this landscape is, and this is just the side of the road.
P.S. The next time you’re feeling ponderous, ask yourself… “Why are there fossilized seashells 9,600 feet above sea level?”