5/25/98

KUFM / KGPR

T. M. Power

The Triumph of Entrepreneurial Attitudes in Escalante

On the eve of the 1996 election, President Clinton infuriated a large number of Utah residents by sitting on the rim of the Grand Canyon and signing an executive order creating the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument, a huge sprawling area in southwestern Utah of spectacular canyon and high desert landscape. Federally protected lands now cover most of south central Utah, stretching from Glen Canyon and Capitol Reef in the east and Bryce Canyon and Zion National Parks in the West.

Utah has a history of conflict with the federal government that dates back to its origins as a Mormon homeland. The creation of the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument was seen as just another flexing of federal government muscle at the expense of local residents and their way of life.

The anger and obstruction originally triggered by the establishment of the Monument now appears to be giving way to a healthy entrepreneurial exploration of the economic opportunities that the new Monument presents to local residents. At least that appears to be the case in the town of Escalante, which is nearly surrounded by the Monument, where I recently spent a couple of days talking to business, political, and educational leaders.

In many ways this is a productive shift of residents’ gaze away from the rear-view mirror, forward, towards the windshield, where current and future economic opportunities can be more clearly seen.

Agriculture, timber, and mineral development formed Southern Utah’s historic economic base. Those will continue to play a very important role, but there are important characteristics associated with these natural resource industries that make it crucial for communities heavily dependent upon them to diversify and develop supplemental sources of employment and income.

Our natural resource industries represent about the oldest types of economic activities in which humanity has engaged. This long history has allowed technological change to make deep inroads in the size of the work force needed to produce any given level of output. That has meant that even where there are no limits on access to raw materials, the employment potential of these natural resource sectors has been constantly reduced. In addition, the products of our natural resource industries tend to be sold into global markets where there prices are set. This has led to both fluctuating prices and prices that are constantly under downward pressure by high worldwide levels of production.

These characteristics of our natural resource industries nearly assure that no matter how important they continue to be in our regional economies, they are unlikely to be sources of future economic vitality: new jobs and new income. Natural resource communities that cannot supplement these sectors with new economic activities are very likely to follow the downward slide of past farm, mine, and timber towns. The thousands of agricultural ghost towns in Kansas or the hundreds of mining ghost towns in the Rocky Mountain states were not created by federal government land management decisions but by shifting markets, technological change, and the exhaustion of resources. Those ghost towns tell an important tale about the importance of community flexibility, adaptability, and diversification.

That is why the new Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument represents an important new set of economic opportunities for the residents of southwestern Utah. It offers the potential to continue growing a new economy to supplement the historic economic base. Currently, residents of Escalante are actively and creatively seeking to mold those new economic opportunities to meet their community’s own values and objectives rather than simply stewing in their anger at the federal government while gazing wistfully in the rear-view mirror.

This does not mean uncritically embracing tourism or mass commercial recreation. Escalante’s residents express a healthy skeptical attitude towards tourism. They do not want to be crushed by mass recreation the way Moab and Park City have been. They hope to focus away from drive-through tourism and emphasize instead different types of guided experiences for visitors that draw more heavily upon local skills and expertise. Fewer guests spending more time and more money should be more compatible with protecting both the community and the landscape. Educational institutions and programs are being organized to prepare local young people to help fill these roles as guides while also expanding scientific understanding of the surrounding complex desert ecosystems. At the same time, senior citizens are being recruited to help tell visitors the story of Escalante. Efforts are underway to improve the physical attractiveness of the community while these educational efforts seek to deepen the town’s cultural base. It is not just temporary visitors that represent economic opportunity. New permanent residents and businesses do too.

This is a coordinated effort by many diverse elements in the community: The local schools, the mayor and city council, the Chamber of Commerce, state and federal agencies, and an active citizenry.

None of this is a magic bullet for either the local economy or a threatened way of life, but, then, dreaming of the recovery of the nuclear industry or the return to high energy prices or the expansion of the timber industry was not either. These are down-to-earth, practical, and entrepreneurial efforts that recognize that increasingly it is the attractiveness of a community as a place to live, work, and do business--the quality of the social and natural environments—that determines its economic future. Those local qualities increasingly make up the community’s new economic base. It is upon these that local residents are now appropriately focusing. In that context, the new National Monument will increasingly be seen as the key resource supporting current and future economic vitality in southwestern Utah.