A History of Southern Utah and Its National Parks (Revised)

Before the highways brought millions to gape at Zion's towering walls, this red rock landscape held entirely different stories. Angus M. Woodbury's landmark history traces Southern Utah from the ancestral homelands of the Paiute and other indigenous peoples through the shock of Spanish exploration, the gritty determination of Mormon pioneers, and the eventual creation of the national parks that made this corner of the desert famous worldwide. The narrative follows figures like Dominguez and Escalante who first mapped these canyons, Jedediah Smith who carved early trade routes through terrain that defeated lesser men, and the settler communities that transformed the frontier. Yet the book's deepest richness lies in its careful documentation of the indigenous populations whose relationship with this land stretches back millennia, and whose world was irrevocably reshaped by European contact. Woodbury interweaves the geological wonders that eventually spurred conservation efforts with the human ambitions and conflicts that shaped whether these lands would be exploited or preserved. The result is an essential portrait of how wilderness became park, and what was lost and gained in that transformation.