Arches tested a timed-entry program in 2022. Here's what happened afterward

KEY TAKEAWAYS

• Arches National Park's timed-entry program reduced visitation by 9% from 2022-2024, according to a new study.
• Despite this, inflation-adjusted visitor spending grew by 22% in Grand County.
• The program will not be used this year after local leaders sought alternative visitor management solutions.

MOAB — A pilot program that aimed to spread out visitors to Arches National Park likely led to a decline in the park's visitation, but it didn't stop Grand County's economy from growing

Those were the two key findings in a new report outlining the impact of a program that will not be used this year.

Arches' average visitation between 2022 and 2024 shrank by 9.3% when compared to the three years before the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, according to the report compiled by the University of Utah Kem C. Gardner Policy Institute.

Park officials began implementing the timed-entry system in 2022 in response to record-setting visitation the year before. The park recorded 1.8 million visits in 2021, which led to more headaches, forcing rangers to close its entry point multiple times over the summer because the park's lots were full.

The pilot program aimed to spread out visitation throughout the day so that not everyone arrived all at once. While the concept worked to keep the park open more frequently, local leaders worried that it capped visitation, as visitation has averaged 1.48 million annually since.

While visitation declined, total visitation at Arches, Canyonlands, and Dead Horse Point State Park combined rose by 4.7% in the first three years of the timed-entry program, the report noted.

This spurred a 22% increase in inflation-adjusted average visitor spending across Grand County compared with the three years before the pandemic. Total jobs increased by 16%, including close to 20% in the private sector.

Tax collections from visitor spending rose by approximately 28%.

"Across a broad array of standard economic indicators, we see economic growth took place in Grand County," said Phil Dean, research director and chief economist for the institute, as he presented the data to the Grand County Commission last week.

The findings were based on trends at Arches National Park and the area surrounding Grand County, between 2017 and 2019 and 2022 and 2024.

2021 saw the highest visitor spending at $523 million, after a low of $316 million the previous year. The average of the two years ($419.5 million) was still lower than the average of the following three years ($456 million). Those years were excluded from the study because of how anomalous they were, Dean said.

"You do see a decline, a relatively small decline (between 2022 and 2024), but even so, that 2024 time period is still well above the pre-timed entry average for that comparison," he added.

Every other national park in Utah experienced a leveling off after spikes in 2021, but Arches visitation has been more consistently flat since 2022 than the others, researchers also pointed out. They ran several simulations of possible visitor trends without a timed-entry program and estimated that it likely reduced visitation by 14%.

This may have reduced spending by $41.4 million to $55 million annually, though that's more speculative, Dean said.

The study didn't include a growing number of recreation options in the region because they didn't exist before the pandemic. These include Utahraptor State Park, which attracted more than 70,000 visits last year, the same year it had its grand opening.

Grand County leaders commissioned the study to better understand the impacts of the program, which was put on hiatus this year. The numbers offer a "stark review of the totality" of the program, said Grand County Commissioner Mike McCurdy, after Dean concluded his presentation.

County leaders celebrated Arches National Park's decision to drop the program this year, after submitting a letter to Interior Secretary Doug Burgum in 2025, urging him to consider other options to address park visitation.

"This commission believes in welcoming visitors from around the world, and we look forward to exploring alternatives and opportunities that will benefit our community and protect Arches for generations to come," Melodie McCandless, chairwoman of the Grand County Commission, said in February.

The park has already recorded 436,465 visits this year, before timed-entry would have gone into effect. That's a 10% increase from the first four months of 2025.

The Key Takeaways for this article were generated with the assistance of large language models and reviewed by our editorial team. The article, itself, is solely human-written.

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Carter Williams

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Carter Williams is a reporter for KSL. He covers Salt Lake City, statewide transportation issues, outdoors, the environment and weather. He is a graduate of Southern Utah University.