Escalante

So we're on our way to Bryce Canyon.

We finally get to Bryce Canyon and we decide we're going to go and do a hike because we're on our way to another lodging, which is a tiny cabin in Escalante, Utah.

Tiny cabin.

Yes.

But when you're not around it, you know, So anyway, that was kind of exciting.

So we continue our drive after that.

And we go to of land, Escalante.

Of land.

Phenomenal place.

Escalante.

Boulder, Escalante, that route.

Been down through there for sure.

Anyway, so you were talking about beyond this plan.

Story two.

Last October, four of us decided to explore the slot canyons near Escalante, Utah.

I was twenty-eight years old and working as a graphic designer in Denver.

After spending so much time staring at screens and worrying about deadlines, I desperately needed an opportunity to disconnect.

It's fun.

Uh, I'm not sure what the tourist numbers look like on places like Moab and Barriers and Escalante in Utah, but definitely check out the lower end national parks, the ones that folks don't really think about.

Glacier National Park in Montana, I hear, is gorgeous.

Places that I've been, I actually haven't had the time to go out that way, 'cause I turn left to go to Colorado.

Welcome back, friend, to Hometown History, the podcast that takes a stroll down the main streets and back alleys of the past to uncover how local stories shaped the world.

I'm Shane Waters, and today we're headed to Escalante, Utah, where a 20-year-old artist rode out of town in 1934.

He went into canyon country, and he never came back.

90 years later, we're still arguing about why.

His letters from that year are some of the best desert writing anybody has done.

He could put a thunderstorm crossing a mesa on the page in a way that changes the temperature on your skin.

By fall, he was working his way through southern Utah, Escalante, Boulder.

Escalante had been settled in 1875, a ranching town of about a thousand people, ringed by scattered ranches and dirt roads that washed out when it rained.