![]() ![]() ![]() “I love knowing that there are people who care about Zion enough to put up a lot of resources to protect it.” – Cassity Bromley, head of resource management and research at Zion National Park That growth, plus an uptick in visitors, has created conflicts with access to the park from outside and development from inside. George, the largest nearby town, was home to around 5,000 people in the 1950s its population is over 95,000 today. That redrawing of boundaries created a national park with an unusually high number of inholdings, chunks of private land islanded within the official boundaries, including more than 30 private parcels totaling nearly 3,500 acres.Īs southern Utah’s population has exploded, both inholdings and private land around the park have become valuable. In 1956, the neighboring Zion National Monument was appended to it, enlarging the park yet again. In 1919, Congress enlarged the national monument and renamed it Zion National Park. Utah’s oldest national park was originally established as Mukuntuweap National Monument by President Taft in 1909 (the name is thought to be Paiute for “straight canyon”). To grasp why Zion is vulnerable we must understand its unique history. Its very popularity makes Zion vulnerable to development from inside and outside park boundaries, not to mention complicating access to its iconic trails. Today, this protected land is threatened: Zion National Park’s 229 square miles of plateaus, domes, and canyons host 5 million visitors a year, more than either Yellowstone or the Grand Canyon-it is the second most visited national park in the U.S. The park’s vertiginous topography, carved from 2,000-footthick layers of Navajo sandstone by the Virgin River, has provided a refuge in the desert for humans as far back as 9,000 BCE and shelters Utah’s greatest diversity of wild plants and animals. This spectacular collection of massive sandstone canyons and cliffs topped by templelike domes and buttes also reflects the connotations of the word zion: highest point, holy place, utopia, refuge. What is now Zion National Park was named for the biblical city of David by Mormon settlers in the 1860s, a tribute to the awe-inspiring landscape. ![]()
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