Red Rock and Rawhide

Ranching in the Grand Staircase, Escalante Canyons, and Arizona Strip Country

By Jerry D. Spangler, Mark E. DeGiovanni Miller

The red rock country of southern Utah, though used for many things, has for more than a century been synonymous with livestock ranching. Federal ownership and management of public lands there have led generations of socially isolated ranchers to mistrust federal officials and exhibit outright hostility toward environmentalists intent on removing livestock from the range, culminating in fierce rhetoric over the future of the American West.

Today, the relatively few cattle ranchers who continue to operate in southern Utah are part of a complex political and social mix of peoples and interests, as Indigenous nations, environmentalists, politicians, and tourists all have differing positions on land use in the region. In Red Rock and Rawhide, Jerry D. Spangler and Mark E. DeGiovanni Miller provide the first comprehensive examination of the history of livestock grazing in the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument and surrounding areas, drawing on years of research to show how the culture and industry have changed and continue to evolve.

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Jerry D. Spangler is a professional archaeologist and executive director of the Colorado Plateau Archaeological Alliance, a non-profit dedicated to protecting cultural sites on public lands. He is the author of The Crimson Cowboys: The Remarkable Odyssey of the 1931 Claflin-Emerson Expedition (University of Utah Press, 2018).

Mark E. DeGiovanni Miller is professor of history at Southern Utah University and author of Forgotten Tribes: Unrecognized Indians and the Federal Acknowledgment Process and Claiming Tribal Identity: The Five Tribes and the Process of Federal Acknowledgment.