Photo of the Day 1 October 2007


Grand Staircase-Escalante Outpost, Utah, 1999
Photograph by Len Jenshel
Striated red-rock mountains capped by a piercingly blue sky overlook a weather-beaten outpost in Utah's Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument. Part of southern Utah's "red rock country," Grand Staircase-Escalante was named a national monument in 1996, adding a 1.9-million-acre (768,903-hectare) slice of parched, mineral-rich wilderness to U.S. protected lands.