The Bears Ears: A Human History of America's Most Endangered Wilderness

by David Roberts

My favorite Moki Dugway saga is one Vaughn told me years ago. Long before Vaughn moved to Bluff, an old-timer named Melvin Gaines was driving his bulldozer up the switchbacks to work on the road. Mel had been part of the crew that built the Dugway, and for years thereafter he served on the highway crew. On this trip, halfway up, he came upon a woman standing next to a car parked in the middle of the road. Melvin asked her if anything was the matter. She said, “I’m too scared to drive either up or down. Could you drive my car up for me?” “Lady,” said Mel, “I’m on the job here. I’ve got work to do”—only to have the addled woman burst into tears, “Oh, all right,” he said, opening the driver-side door. “Get in.” “Oh, no,” answered the woman. “I’m too scared to ride. I’ll walk up. Just leave the keys in the car.” Exasperated, his day’s mission on back burner, Melvin steered the auto gently up the Dugway until he reached the rim of Cedar Mesa. But as he got out of the car, he realized that the seat of his trousers was soaking wet. The poor woman had been so frightened by the time she got halfway up the Dugway, she had peed her pants as she sat there awaiting a rescue.

During the eleven months between Trump’s taking office and his announcement of the vastly reduced Bears Ears monument, the president sent Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke on a tour of the area, as he ostensibly sought opinions about how much of Obama’s 1.35 million acres should be preserved. At the same time the department asked for citizens all over the country to express their views online in a massive poll set up by the government. Of the 1.3 million responses available for tally, a remarkable 99 percent voted in favor of retention of the full Obama monument. Zinke also swore that the needs of the oil and gas industry would have no bearing on the decision he and the president reached. But a leaked e-mail from Utah senator Orrin Hatch’s office that offered a map preserving only lands that had no potential for oil and gas extraction ended up coinciding almost exactly with the “new” national monument Trump unveiled in December 2017.