In this vast landscape, solitude endures amid some of the wildest lands in the United States, where penetrating silence, rock formations, sudden waterfalls after summer deluges, and a rugged, sparsely roaded frontier define the 1.9-million-acre Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument. As the last area mapped in the lower 48 states, this region retains a strongly wild character shaped by wind, water, and time. Its public lands protect not only opportunities for solitude but also significant scientific and cultural resources, including prehistoric plants and animals, paleontological discoveries on the remote Kaiparowits Plateau such as duck-billed dinosaurs and gigantic crocodiles, massive petrified logs in the Circle Cliffs, and artifacts of ancient peoples in the winding canyons of the Escalante River drainage.