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For 84 sinuous miles, the Green River of eastern Utah carves its way through one of the largest roadless areas in the lower 48 states, forming the remote and rugged country of Desolation and Gray canyons as it cuts through the Tavaputs Plateau. Desolation Canyon was so named when, in 1869, John Wesley Powell first chronicled the river’s nearly 60 side canyons, describing the journey as one through “a region of wildest desolation.”
DESOLATION CANYON
Remote and spectacular, Desolation Canyon has been home to Fremont People, their stories left behind in the pictographs, petroglyphs, and ancient dwellings, towers and granaries that still decorate the canyon’s walls. Since time immemorial, the Desolation Canyon region has also been home to the Ute Indian Tribe, whose Uintah and Ouray Reservation borders the east side of the river from above Sand Wash to Coal Creek Canyon, or 70 miles of Desolation/Gray Canyons.
Now, boaters of all persuasions relish multi-day river trips through relatively easy riffles and rapids, where sandy beaches with massive Fremont cottonwoods provide shade and cover from wind. The piñon, juniper and douglas fir-covered slopes of the canyon harbor wintering deer and elk, nesting waterfowl, bison, mountain lions, migrating birds and the occasional sun-bleached blackbear. Of the 84 river miles, 66 miles are within the Desolation Canyon Wilderness Study Area, the largest WSA in the lower 48 states. Looking up from the river, the edge of the canyon is nearly 5,000 feet overhead , and anywhere from 2-150 million years old. Of the canyon’s unique and exposed geologic history, celebrated southwest writer Ellen Meloy wrote: “You launch in mammals and end up in sharks and oysters.”
THREATS
While it’s true that Desolation Canyon remains one of the most remote places in the contiguous United States, the threats it faces are not so remote. And ironically, the canyon’s deep and layered history and geology in some ways, threaten the river most. The Green River Formation, formed between 33-56 million years ago, is a much sought after petroleum resource. A recent report by the USGS posited that the formation could hold as much as 1.3 trillion barrels of oil. In order to convert tar sands and oil shale into usable oil (1.55 million barrels/day), producers would require about 378,000 acre feet of water per/year, likely from the Green. While the inner gorge of Desolation Canyon is a designated wilderness study area, on the state, tribal, and federal lands surrounding it, oil rigs march right to the canyon’s edge.
