Utah State Historical Society, V12, No. 3-4, July-October, 1944.

From Delicate Arch to the Zion Narrows, Utah's five national parks and eight national monuments are home to some of America's most amazing scenic treasures, created over long expanses of geologic time. In Wonders of Sand and Stone, Frederick H. Swanson traces the recent human story behind the creation of these places as part of a protected mini-empire of public lands. Drawing on extensive historical research, Swanson presents little-known accounts of people who saw in these sculptured landscapes something worth protecting. Readers are introduced to the region's early explorers, scientists, artists, and travelers as well as the local residents and tourism promoters who worked with the National Park Service to build the system of parks and monuments we know today, when Utah's national parks and monuments face multiple challenges from increased human use and from development outside their borders. As scientists continue to uncover the astonishing diversity of life in these desert and mountain landscapes, and archaeologists and Native Americans document their rich cultural resources, the management of these federal lands remains critically important. Swanson provides us with a detailed and timely background to advance and inform discussions about what form that management should take.

"Fillmore surveys the origins of the formations and structural features and the geologic processes that have shaped the Colorado Plateau. He also provides road logs with mile-by-mile interpretive geologic descriptions along key sections of highway traversing this area.".

General geology papers and road logs for the Millenium Field Conference in Utah.

Named Best Mystery Thriller in the 2021 New Mexico-Arizona Book Awards "Part mystery; part quirky, darkly funny, mayhem-filled thriller; and part meditation on what it means to 'own' land, artifacts, and the narrative of history in the West . . . A fast-paced, highly entertaining hybrid of Tony Hillerman and Edward Abbey." --Kirkus Reviews Anthropologist Sophia Shepard is researching the impact of tourism on cultural sites in a remote national monument on the Utah-Arizona border when she crosses paths with two small-time criminals. The Ashdown brothers were hired to steal maps from a "collector" of Native American artifacts, but their ineptitude has alerted the local sheriff to their presence. Their employer, a former lobbyist seeking lucrative monument land that may soon be open to energy exploration, sends a fixer to clean up their mess. Suddenly, Sophia must put her theories to the test in the real world, and the stakes are higher than she could have ever imagined. What begins as a madcap caper across the RV-strewn vacation lands of southern Utah becomes a meditation on mythology, authenticity, the ethics of preservation, and one nagging question: Who owns the past?

Harriet, with the help of her famous sister, gets a job editing at the Gazette but the pudgy, foolish son of the owner, continually makes her job awkward and difficult. He is determined to undermine her position and make her his wife. Liz struggles with being a newlywed, being "with child" and keeping up on her writing, Mary and her sister Harriet attempt to help her navigate this difficult time as her Peter seems to be preoccupied. In the meantime, the gazette featurette progresses with the botched wedding of Lavender and John by the miraculously undead pirate, Morose.

"With selections from nearly 50 writers spanning 160 years, this book is the best primer on the extraordinary redrock landscape of Capitol Reef. For 12,000 years, people have left a rich record of their experiences in Utah's Capitol Reef National Park. In The Capitol Reef Reader, award-winning author and photographer Stephen Trimble collects the best of this writing -- 160 years worth of words that capture the spirit of the park and its surrounding landscape in personal narratives, philosophical riffs, and historic and scientific records"--Provided by publisher.

The twentieth could easily be Utah’s most interesting, complex century, yet popular ideas of what is history seem mired in the nineteenth. One reason may be the lack of readily available writing on more recent Utah history. This collection of essays shifts historical focus forward to the twentieth, which began and ended with questions of Utah’s fit with the rest of the nation. In between was an extended period of getting acquainted in an uneasy but necessary marriage, which was complicated by the push of economic development and pull of traditional culture, demand for natural resources from a fragile and scenic environment, and questions of who governs and how, who gets a vote, and who controls what is done on and to the contested public lands. Outside trade and a tourist economy increasingly challenged and fed an insular society. Activists left and right declaimed constitutional liberties while Utah’s Native Americans become the last enfranchised in the nation. Proud contributions to national wars contrasted with denial of deep dependence on federal money; the skepticism of provocative writers, with boosters eager for growth; and reflexive patriotism somehow bonded to ingrained distrust of federal government.