Monticello, Utah

Monticello is the county seat of San Juan County, perched at just over seven thousand feet in the foothills of the Abajo Mountains. The pioneers who first settled this part of Utah had come the hard way: the famous Hole-in-the-Rock expedition of eighteen seventy-nine to eighteen eighty, which blasted a wagon road through solid sandstone above the Colorado River and arrived at Bluff after six months in the desert.

Farming along the San Juan River bottom proved too unpredictable, and seven years after Bluff was founded a scouting party rode into the high country to find better ground. In eighteen eighty-seven LDS Stake President Francis Hammond sent a small group to establish Monticello on the slopes below the Abajo peaks, where springs and timber were reliable. The town was incorporated in nineteen ten and became the county seat in eighteen ninety-five. Today it is a base for exploring the Bears Ears region.