Delicate traveling: Arches, other Utah sites see increase in visitors

MOAB — High gasoline prices, summer heat and "special offers" from faraway places don't seem to be hurting Utah's national parks and monuments.

Which is a good indication: (1) Those not coming to visit are being offset by the stay-closer-to-home crowd and/or (2) Utah's sites are too spectacular to pass up — costly fill-ups or not.

Total visitor counts at the 13 national sites for the first half of 2006 totaled 3,067,942. Year-to-date, America's parks are showing a drop of 1 percent.

Year-to-date figures show Bryce, Canyonlands, Capitol Reef, Dinosaur, Hovenweep, Natural Bridges and Zion are down through June by a combined 113,134 visitors over 2005 figures.

Arches, Cedar Breaks, Glen Canyon, Golden Spike, Rainbow Bridge and Timpanogos Cave are up a total of 126,322.

Bryce numbers show the biggest loss. Through June, 364,571 visitors passed through the gates, which is down from 392,464 counted in 2005. This accounted for a net loss of 27,893. Entering into June, park numbers were up slightly. For some unknown reason, however, counts were off roughly 28,000 for June.

Showing the biggest rise was Cedar Breaks National Monument near Brian Head, with a jump of 55,949 thus far in 2006. Officials there attribute some of the increase to new promotional programs, which would include the first annual Wildflower Festival.

Glen Canyon, a k a Lake Powell, showed a jump of 35,087, which is no doubt due in part to rising water levels.

The number of visitors to Rainbow Bridge, via Lake Powell, is up 11,120 over 2005 numbers, again a result of higher water and therefore a shorter hike to the bridge.

Zion National Park was down 25,508, but considering total visitation for the first half of 2006 was 1.2 million, the drop is considered relatively small — roughly 2 percent.

Ron Terry, public information officer at Zion, said it's hard to identify reasons for the drop, "but it could be gasoline prices and it could be people are not taking longer trips. We're in the process of conducting a visitor survey. When we get the results, it will give us a better idea of where visitors are from and what they come here to do."

He did say that consensus among the staff is that since the bus shuttle system was started, more people are using the parks trail systems.

"We think the shuttle has helped to make the trailheads more accessible without all the cars," he added. "Of all the comments we get, I'd say close to 90 percent are overwhelmingly supportive of the shuttle."