Bears Ears

Bears Ears National Monument protects a sweeping red-rock landscape in southeastern Utah, named for a pair of twin buttes that rise like ears above the surrounding mesas and canyons. The land holds an extraordinary density of archaeological sites - cliff dwellings, rock art, and ancient roads left by the Ancestral Puebloans and others - amid a maze of slot canyons, sandstone towers, and high forested plateaus.

Designated in 2016 after years of advocacy by a coalition of Native American nations, it became a flashpoint in the national fight over public lands: its boundaries were sharply cut in 2017 and then restored in 2021, swinging across more than a million acres. It is co-managed in a pioneering partnership between federal agencies and an intertribal commission, making it a landmark in the movement to give tribes a direct voice in caring for ancestral lands.

• Utah
  The Beehive State, red rock and the Great Salt Lake related