Come explore the Utah desert where it is rumored 20 year old artist Everett Ruess disappeared in the fall of 1934. Ruess left home at 16 to explore the American Southwest. He was last heard from in Escalante where he wrote, "I enjoy beauty and the vagrant life I lead more keenly all the time. I prefer the saddle to the streetcar, and the star-sprinkled sky to the roof, the obscure and difficult trail leading into the unknown to the paved highway, and the deep peace of the wild to the discontent bred by cities."
The 1.9 million acres of Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument was set aside as protected wilderness in the fall of 1996. The Monument is divided into three distinct areas; the Grand Staircase, the Kaiparowits Plateau and the Canyons of the Escalante.
