The Greater San Rafael Swell

Honoring Tradition and Preserving Storied Lands

Stephen E. Strom, Jonathan Bailey

• Publisher: University of Arizona Press
• Year: 2022
• eBook ISBN:
  9780816545162
• Print ISBN:
  9780816543922
• Subtopic: North American History

A landscape of great natural beauty, Utah's red rock country is a place where the passage from deep time to the present is revealed in stunningly sculpted and colorful geological strata that span 350 million years of Earth's history. At the heart of this dramatic landscape is the Greater San Rafael Swell—a land of both geologic and human tumult.
 
Natural and human history come together in The Greater San Rafael Swell, which spans much of Emery County in Utah. Authors Stephen Strom and Jonathan Bailey paint a multi-faceted picture of a singular place through photographs, along with descriptions of geology, paleontology, archaeology, history, and dozens of interviews with individuals who devoted more than two decades to developing a shared vision of the future of both the Swell and the County.  At its core, the book relates the important story of how a coalition of ranchers, miners, off-road enthusiasts, conservationists, recreationists, and Native American tribal nations worked together for nearly 25 years to forge and pass the Emery County Public Lands Management Act in 2019.
 
This book chronicles hopeful stories for our times: how citizens of Emery and three other counties in the rural West worked to resolve perhaps the most volatile issue in the region – the future of public lands. Both their successes and the processes by which they found common ground serve as beacons in today's uncertain landscape – beacons that can illuminate paths toward rebuilding our shared democracy from the ground up.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Preface
• Emery County: Its Land and People
• Memory of Deep Time
• History of Emery County’s Indigenous Peoples
• Modern History of Emery County
• Collaboration and Compromise: Forging the Emery County Public Land Bill
• Successful Land Use Compromises: Three Case Studies
• Finding Common Ground: Lessons for Approaching Public Lands Disputes
• Aligning Conservation Goals with the Economies and Cultures of Public Lands Counties
• Author Reflection: Jonathan T. Bailey
• Author Reflection: Stephen E. Strom
• Acknowledgments
• Appendix A: Lands Proposed for Additional Protection
• Appendix B: Public Lands Primer
• Index