Escalante, UT

Escalante is a Garfield County city along Utah Scenic Byway 12, set in the Potato Valley with cliffs, washes, and sandstone country running out toward Grand Staircase–Escalante. Its name comes from Silvestre Vélez de Escalante, the Franciscan missionary who passed through the region on the 1776 Domínguez–Escalante expedition. The town’s working roots are farming and ranching, but the local map also includes the Escalante River, Posey Lake roads improved by the Civilian Conservation Corps, and Escalante Petrified Forest State Park west of town. Escalante is the kind of place where the road, the river, and the red-rock country all belong in the same introduction.