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TORREY, Wayne County — Capitol Reef National Park is still as busy as ever, even though its visitation dropped by nearly 13% from a record-breaking 2021 to 2022.
About 1.23 million visitors flocked to the park last year to take in its red rock vistas and cultural history. The park is well on its way to recording more than 1 million visits again this year, which would mark the seventh time that has happened in the last eight years, and a feat that first occurred in 2016 as a sign that its popularity is here to stay.
"Basically, park visitation has doubled in the past decade," said Jim Roche, the park's resource management chief. "Many of the park facilities are in need of repair and refurbishment, primarily in this case, roads and parking."
That's why Roche is spearheading a plan that calls for an overhaul of Scenic Drive and some parking areas near it to better handle the thousands of people who visit the park every day, using infrastructure that was originally designed in the 1960s to account for about 160,000 annual visitors at the time.
During an online public meeting Wednesday evening, Roche explained that the park service and the Federal Highway Administration will primarily focus on developed areas of the park.
The project calls for repairs to Scenic Drive and an expansion of the paved parking area at the top of Capitol Gorge, as well as construction of a new parking area by Grand Wash. Crews will also expand the park's visitor center and Chimney Rock trailhead parking areas along state Route 24, which leads to Scenic Drive. It would add dozens of new parking stalls in the selected areas.
"Storms and monsoons, over the past decade, have done quite a bit of damage, and so this project seeks to make major repairs to drainage, as well as enhancing it to protect those facilities," Roche adds. "At the same time, improving these parking areas offers us the opportunity to improve accessibility to park facilities."
He said Scenic Drive's curves will also be widened enough to allow for two vehicles to pass each other without leaving the pavement. Telecommunication lines in the Fruita area will be upgraded, extended and buried, too.
The project isn't expected to impact the cultural or natural resources. Capitol Reef officials are still collecting public comments on the plan through July 6. Those can be submitted online through the park service website.
If approved, construction will begin as early as next spring, possibly resulting in Scenic Drive being closed from the fee station to Capitol Gorge from April to October 2024. Partial closures of the Chimney Rock trailhead and visitor center parking lots are also expected for up to three months next year, while other short-term closures are likely for paving in the developed Fruita area, too.
Cassity Bromley, the interim superintendent at Capitol Reef National Park, said park officials would like to open up as much of the park as possible during the construction; however, it may be hard to reopen some of the construction areas even on the weekends once construction begins. She said it is also faster and more efficient to close off Scenic Drive than to keep one lane open at a time.
While an active monsoon season could pose construction challenges, Roche said crews were able to work through the recent reconstruction of S.R. 24 without major delays. He's confident that crews will be able to complete the 2024 project within the expected time frame.
The project also means that travel through some of the park's more popular areas may be difficult to access next summer. Bromley said rangers will likely highlight other parts of the park people can visit once the project gets underway. The Grand Wash hikes will also remain open, though people will have to access it from S.R. 24.
"We're aware that this is going to be a pretty big disruption to visitation in the park, and we'll try to minimize some closures and impacts," she said. "Most of the park will still be open. This is occurring only in a very small percentage of the park."
