CHAPTER
1
Introduction
KANE COUNTY AND A SENSE OF PLACE
K
.ane C o u n t y is part of the great Colorado Plateau and is located on the southern boundary of the state of Utah between San Juan and Washington Counties, separated to the east from San Juan County by the Colorado River. To the north, the county is bordered by Garfield and Iron Counties. To the south is the Arizona Strip country of northern Arizona. One of the largest counties in the state, with some 3,904 square miles, or approximately 2.5 million acres, Kane County's boundaries have varied over time, influenced by the ruggedness of the land and the general sparse p o p u l a t i o n of the region.' While on a visit to Kane County in 1942, Wallace Stegner voiced his response to the area's beauty: The tiny oases huddle in their pockets in the rock, surrounded on all sides by as terrible and beautiful wasteland as the world can show, colored every color of the spectrum even to blue and green, sculptured by sandblast winds, fretted by meandering lines of cliffs hundreds of miles long and often several thousand feet high, carved and broken and split by canyons so deep and narrow that
