Grand Staircase

Ten years ago when then-President Bill Clinton created Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument, Dennis Judd hoisted the U.S. flag upside down — an international sign of distress — in front of his Denny's Wigwam store in Kanab.

"We did it for a week in protest," Judd says.

Nearby, a hotel hung Clinton in effigy. Residents wearing black ribbons staged a protest at the high school gym decorated with black balloons. They fumed that Clinton did not consult with them and issued his election-year proclamation to please environmentalists by killing potential coal mining within monument boundaries.

Now Judd is doing what he says would have been truly unimaginable a decade ago. He has become a board member of Partners of Grand Staircase-Escalante, a citizens group dedicated to helping the monument.

"I wanted to turn it around to where the monument would be beneficial for the local people," he says. The monument "still needs to be discovered, really."

He is an example of how many who were once angry are now learning to live with the vast monument that covers 4 percent of Utah.

But others are still upset, even a decade after Clinton created it on Sept. 18, 1996. They say it cost Utah billions of dollars from lost mining; cost hundreds of high-paying jobs; and cost schools millions from trust lands.

In short, the monument is still controversial. That's not surprising, since it was born and raised in controversy.

Political shenanigans

Utahns were stunned when Clinton established the monument by declaration with no prior consultation and after insisting for days that no such action was imminent.

The first public word that it was under consideration came just 11 days before its formation, when the Washington Post reported it. When Utah media and members of Congress called the White House, they were told the Post was mistaken, that the idea was in the earliest stages of consideration and years away from any action. That was a fib.

Clinton would say he created the monument because Andalex Corp. planned a large coal mine there. Environmental groups worried development would harm nearby areas under consideration for protection as formal wilderness.

They urged Clinton to use his power under the Antiquities Act of 1906 to declare the area a national monument and make it off-limits to mining. It was a novel approach for wilderness protection that even would be explored at length on an episode of the TV-series "The West Wing." Clinton later would use the Antiquities Act to create 15 more national monuments.