Bears Ears

Bears Ears is not a single site but a landscape: twin buttes rising over cedar mesa country between Monticello and Bluff, Utah, wrapped in canyons, cliff dwellings, kivas, granaries, and rock art panels from thousands of years of continuous use. The twin buttes carry the same name, Bears Ears, in the languages of the region's tribes, and the area is sacred ground for the Hopi Tribe, Navajo Nation, Ute Mountain Ute Tribe, Zuni Tribe, and Ute Indian Tribe, along with many other tribes with ties to the region. Traditional gathering, ceremony, and plant and mineral harvesting continue across the landscape.

Its political history is unusually turbulent: established in 2016 under President Obama at about 1.35 million acres, cut by about 85 percent in 2017 under President Trump, restored to about 1.36 million acres in 2021 under President Biden, and reduced again on July 13, 2026 to roughly 121,000 acres in two units under a new proclamation that cited Antiquities Act scope and critical-minerals access. Through all of it, the five tribes have pressed for and won a management role without precedent at this scale: the Bears Ears Commission now works with the BLM and Forest Service under a 2022 agreement, and a 2025 resource management plan was built on traditional Indigenous knowledge alongside western science. The entry's honest frame is that the tribes' relationship to this land does not follow the boundary lines of any proclamation, and that free, prior, and informed consent of the communities that hold this place sacred is the standing condition for any respectful visit.

Visiting

The Bureau of Land Management's Bears Ears page is the managing agency's entry point; the BLM Monticello Field Office (435-587-1500) covers current conditions. Most sites are reached by unpaved roads requiring high clearance, and specific site rules vary. Given the July 2026 boundary change, verify the current status of any specific site and road before visiting. There is no single entrance or fee gate for the monument as a whole.

Photo: yulsman, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons ([source](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Bears_Ears_(50878976902).jpg))