Abstract

Characterized by phenomenal geomorphic features and a fascinating array of cultures, the Colorado Plateau is a unique province that contains more preserved landscapes than anywhere in the world. In contrast, the region was unknown to western geography in the mid-nineteenth century. Even when encountered by American explorers, survival and a perceived dearth of economic resources combined with dominant cultural paradigms to negatively affect assessments of people and place. Not until the Plateau was circumscribed by modern systems and urban cultural expectations would the region's unique geography and "exotic" peoples become the "sacred space" of today. ;After political conquest in the 1840s, U.S. Government explorers and scientists identified transportation routes and catalogued the Plateau's natural history, Indians, and archaeological sites. After the Civil War, the media merged with cultural nationalism to transform the region into a forum for heroic adventure. Geology, anthropology, and archaeology discovered the region shortly after, combining with popular culture to create mythemes central to the Plateau's regional "identity." The province's future incarnations as "sacred space" would be centered around phenomenal geology, aboriginals living in their "natural state," antiquities, and pristine wilderness. Hollywood, conservationists, tourism promoters, and mainstream culture capitalized on this original vision to ensure the Plateau would become the most recognizable landscape in the world, with abstract versions of the "sacred" colliding with those of "placed" people living in the region. ;Using the Plateau's evolution from terra incognita to sacred space as master trope, this dissertation focuses on historical dynamics that best explain this metamorphosis. Beginning with a chapter on how Native Americans, Anglo-Americans, and the Spanish interacted with Utah's Canyonlands, the following four chapters describe how official exploration, cultural perception, and the media merged with physical and cultural geographies to create popular mythologies and basic material infrastructure. Remaining chapters look at twentieth-century developments in Indian Country, Mormon Country, the Greater Canyonlands, and Monument Valley. The historical transformation of the Plateau involved a complex dialectic between physical geographies and cultural landscapes, national forces with local interests, and philosophical ideals with material realities