Utah is a landlocked state in the Mountain West subregion of the Western United States. It is one of the Four Corners states, sharing a border with Arizona, Colorado, and New Mexico. It also borders Wyoming to its northeast, Idaho to its north, and Nevada to its west. In comparison to all the U.S. states and territories, Utah, with a population of just over three million, is the 13th largest by area, the 30th most populous, and the 11th least densely populated. Urban development is mostly concentrated in two regions: the Wasatch Front in the north-central part of the state, which includes the state capital, Salt Lake City, and is home to roughly two-thirds of the population; and Washington County in the southwest, which has somewhat more than 180,000 residents. Most of the western half of Utah lies in the Great Basin.
The Great Salt Lake is the largest saltwater lake in the Western Hemisphere and the eighth-largest terminal lake in the world. It lies in the northern part of the U.S. state of Utah and has a substantial impact upon the local climate, particularly through lake-effect snow. It is a remnant of Lake Bonneville, a prehistoric body of water that covered much of western Utah.
San Juan County is a county in the southeastern portion of the U.S. state of Utah. As of the 2020 United States Census, the population was 14,518. Its county seat is Monticello, while its most populous city is Blanding. The Utah State Legislature named the county for the San Juan River, itself named by Spanish explorers.
Logan is a city in Cache County, Utah, United States. The 2020 census recorded the population was 52,778. Logan is the county seat of Cache County and the principal city of the Logan metropolitan area, which includes Cache County and Franklin County, Idaho. The Logan metropolitan area contained 147,908 people as of the 2020 census. Logan is the location of the main campus of Utah State University.
The Grand Staircase–Escalante National Monument (GSENM) is a United States national monument protecting the Grand Staircase, the Kaiparowits Plateau, and the Canyons of the Escalante in southern Utah. It was established in 1996 by President Bill Clinton under the authority of the Antiquities Act with 1.7 million acres of land, later expanded to 1,880,461 acres (7,610 km2). In 2017, the monument's size was reduced by half in a succeeding presidential proclamation, and it was restored in 2021. The land is among the most remote in the country; it was the last to be mapped in the contiguous United States.
In the United States, a national monument is a protected area that can be created from any land owned or controlled by the federal government by proclamation of the president of the United States or an act of Congress. National monuments protect a wide variety of natural and historic resources, including sites of geologic, marine, archaeological, and cultural importance. The Antiquities Act of 1906 gives presidents the power to proclaim national monuments by executive action. In contrast, national parks in the U.S. must be created by Congressional legislation. Some national monuments were first created by presidential action and later designated as national parks by congressional approval.
Natural Bridges National Monument is a U.S. National Monument located about 50 miles (80 km) northwest of the Four Corners boundary of southeast Utah, in the western United States, at the junction of White Canyon and Armstrong Canyon, part of the Colorado River drainage. It features the thirteenth largest natural bridge in the world, carved from the white Permian sandstone of the Cedar Mesa Formation that gives White Canyon its name.
The Wasatch Range or Wasatch Mountains is a mountain range in the western United States that runs about 160 miles (260 km) from the Utah-Idaho border south to central Utah. It is the western edge of the greater Rocky Mountains, and the eastern edge of the Great Basin region. The northern extension of the Wasatch Range, the Bear River Mountains, extends just into Idaho, constituting all of the Wasatch Range in that state.
The Uinta Mountains are an east-west trending mountain range in northeastern Utah extending a short distance into northwest Colorado and slightly into southwestern Wyoming in the United States. As a subrange of the Rocky Mountains, they are unusual for being the highest range in the contiguous United States running east to west, and lie approximately 100 miles (160 km) east of Salt Lake City. The range has peaks ranging from 11,000 to 13,528 feet, with the highest point being Kings Peak, also the highest point in Utah. The Mirror Lake Highway crosses the western half of the Uintas on its way to Wyoming. Utah State Route 44 crosses the east end of the Uintas between Vernal and Manila.
Kings Peak is the highest peak in the U.S. state of Utah, with an elevation of 13,528 feet (4,123 m) NAVD 88.
Mount Nebo is the southernmost and highest mountain in the Wasatch Range of Utah, in the United States, and the centerpiece of the Mount Nebo Wilderness, inside the Uinta National Forest. It is named after the biblical Mount Nebo in Jordan, overlooking Israel from the east of the Jordan River, which is said to be the place of Moses' death.
The Manti–La Sal National Forest covers more than 1.2 million acres (4,900 km2) and is located in the central and southeastern parts of the U.S. state of Utah and the extreme western part of Colorado. The forest is headquartered in Price, with ranger district offices in Price, Ferron, Ephraim, Moab and Monticello. The maximum elevation is Mount Peale in the La Sal Mountains, reaching 12,721 feet (3,877 m) above sea level. The La Sal Mountains are the second highest mountain range in Utah after the Uintas. Parts of the forest are included in the Bears Ears National Monument.
Dark Canyon Wilderness is a designated Wilderness Area in the heart of southeast Utah's canyon country, part of the Bears Ears National Monument. The wilderness is named for its high steep walls that narrow in the lower section so that they block the light in the morning and late afternoon. The roughly horseshoe-shaped wilderness is made up of the upper part of 40-mile-long (64 km) Dark Canyon and two major tributaries, Woodenshoe Canyon and Peavine Canyon in the Manti-La Sal National Forest. These canyons all descend from pine-covered Elk Ridge northeast of Natural Bridges National Monument. Dark Canyon continues west within a U.S. Bureau of Land Management primitive area that is recommended for wilderness designation. The last four miles (6.4 km) of the main canyon drop steeply through Glen Canyon National Recreation Area into Lake Powell.
Canyons of the Ancients National Monument is a national monument protecting an archaeologically significant landscape located in the southwestern region of the U.S. state of Colorado. The monument's 176,056 acres (712.47 km2) are managed by the Bureau of Land Management, as directed in the presidential proclamation which created the site on June 9, 2000. Canyons of the Ancients National Monument is part of the National Landscape Conservation System, better known as the National Conservation Lands. This system comprises 32,000,000 acres (130,000 km2) managed by the Bureau of Land Management to conserve, protect, and restore these nationally significant landscapes recognized for their outstanding cultural, ecological, and scientific values. Canyons of the Ancients encompasses and surrounds three of the four separate sections of Hovenweep National Monument, which is administered by the National Park Service. The monument was proclaimed in order to preserve the largest concentration of archaeological sites in the United States, primarily Ancestral Puebloan ruins. As of 2022, over 8,500 individual archeological sites had been documented within the monument.
Cedar Mesa is a tableland in San Juan County in the southeastern portion of the U.S. state of Utah. It extends from Elk Ridge in the north, Comb Wash to the east, the gorge of the San Juan River to the south, and Grand Gulch to the west, an area of over 400 square miles (1,000 km2). The center of the mesa is located at approximately 37°26'N and 109°55'W, at an elevation of 6,500 feet (2,000 m). The surrounding terrain has a typical elevation of just 4,200 feet (1,300 m) Most of Cedar Mesa is included in the newly declared (2016) Bears Ears National Monument.
Mark Maryboy is a retired American politician for San Juan County, Utah, and a former Navajo Nation Council Delegate for the Utah Navajo Section of the Navajo tribe. He is the brother of Kenneth Maryboy, who currently serves as the Navejo Nation Council Delegate in the positions he once stood.
John Ream Curtis is an American politician serving as the junior United States senator from Utah, a seat he has held since 2025. A member of the Republican Party, Curtis served as the U.S. representative for Utah's 3rd congressional district from 2017 until 2025 and previously served as the 44th mayor of Provo, Utah, from 2010 to 2017.
Chaco is an American footwear brand known for its product line of adjustable Z-strap sandals for outdoor and water use. The Chaco brand also provides a variety of outdoor-influenced fashion sandals, shoes, flip-flops, boots and accessories.
Hastii K'aayélii was a Diné leader.
Bears Ears National Monument is a United States national monument located in San Juan County in southeastern Utah, established by President Barack Obama by presidential proclamation on December 28, 2016. The monument protects 1,351,849 acres of public land surrounding the Bears Ears—a pair of buttes—and the Indian Creek corridor rock climbing area. The Native American names for the buttes have the same meaning in each of the languages represented in the region. The names are listed in the presidential proclamation as "Hoon’Naqvut, Shash Jáa [sic], Kwiyaghatʉ Nükavachi/Kwiyagatu Nukavachi, Ansh An Lashokdiwe"—all four mean "Bears Ears".
