bEOGRAPHY AND
G r a n d County is a political section of the state of Utah; one of twenty-nine counties within the state. It has an area of 3,692 square miles-slightly over 4 percent of the state's total area-and it lies in the southeast portion of the state. Its boundaries are for the most part arbitrary-only to the west where the county line is designated as the center of the channel of the Green River do the county's boundaries follow a natural geographical feature (although even here the present boundary is not where most would expect). All the other county boundary lines (with the small exception near the northeast corner) are abstract designations. The county is bounded on the north by Uintah County, on the west by Emery County, on the south by San Juan County, and on the east by the state of Colorado. In a larger sense, the county is a section of the planet Earth occupying a portion of the Colorado Plateau geographical province, one of thirty-four such provinces making up the continent of North America. The Colorado Plateau covers some 130,000 square miles of southeastern Utah, southwestern Colorado, northwestern New Mexico, and northern Arizona. It is characterized by large expanses of
