Frederick H. Swanson chronicles the establishment and development of Utah's eight national monuments and five national parks in a new and much needed synthesis. His work is ambitious for taking a regional view of the southern Utah canyon lands, which he calls one of the “key battlegrounds” of landscape preservation (103). Swanson, an environmental historian, is open about his purpose in writing this book. He closes his introduction saying, “What follows is an argument for treating Utah's national parks and monuments as integral parts of one of our planet's most extraordinary natural and cultural regions” (6). His book is a call to action to support forward-thinking landscape-level preservation.
A “mini-empire” of national monuments and parks popped up across Utah's landscape in the twentieth century (24). The Antiquities Act of 1906, which predated the creation of the National Park Service (NPS) by a decade, allowed the US President to set aside...
