The Escalante River: Last River Mapped

You are near the Escalante River, and it holds a quiet distinction. It was the last river of its size to be discovered and mapped in the contiguous United States. That is a startling fact for a country crisscrossed by explorers, but this canyon country is so tangled and remote that it hid an entire river system into the eighteen seventies.

Members of John Wesley Powell's first river expedition actually floated right past the mouth of the Escalante in Glen Canyon in eighteen sixty nine without recognizing it as a major tributary. It was not until the second Powell survey, in eighteen seventy two, that a topographer named Almon Harris Thompson, Powell's brother in law, explored and mapped the river, and named it for the Spanish priest Escalante. From its headwaters on the Aquarius Plateau, the river carves southeast through a labyrinth of red and gold sandstone, feeding dozens of side canyons, natural arches, and hanging gardens before joining the Colorado.

For thousands of years its waters drew the Fremont and Ancestral Puebloan peoples, and today the river corridor is a magnet for backpackers who wade its shallow flow for days between towering walls. In recent years, conservation crews have worked to remove invasive Russian olive trees choking its banks, restoring the native cottonwoods and willows that once lined this last discovered river.