Public land tourism is big business in Utah.
Visitation to the state’s national park sites generated $3.1 billion in 2024. Outdoor recreation statewide contributed around $9.5 billion in 2023.
For remote, rural communities, tourist dollars can be a lifeline. This dynamic has played out at dozens of national monuments across the country, including Utah’s Grand Staircase-Escalante and Bears Ears, says a new report from Headwaters Economics, a Montana-based independent research group.
“We see that these areas do tend to have faster-growing populations and employment,” said Megan Lawson, a Headwaters economist who worked on the report.
While the monuments may not have the crowds that Zion and Bryce Canyon do, they’ve become big draws for their corners of southern Utah. Grand Staircase had an estimated 936,000 visitors in 2024, and Bears Ears welcomed just over 416,000. The figures come from the most recent annual federal reports for the monuments.
Grand Staircase is an especially good example, Lawson said, because economists have collected decades of data since the monument’s designation in 1996. In neighboring Garfield and Kane counties, the number of jobs grew by 51% between 2001 and 2022, while the population increased 26%.
“It's very telling and dramatic in Grand Staircase,” she said. “The long-term and consistent, steady growth that has been happening in that area is really very striking.”
Most of the job growth around Grand Staircase has come in the services sector. That includes hospitality jobs in restaurants, lodging and guide shops, as well as other service providers, such as doctors, architects and accountants. Just over half the private sector jobs in the area are now tied to travel and tourism, but Lawson said that doesn’t mean they’re lesser jobs.
“There's sort of this narrative that, ‘Well, jobs are being lost in high-paying industries like mining or oil and gas. They're being replaced by low-wage tourism jobs,’” Lawson said.
The report found, however, that per capita incomes increased 41% from 2001 to 2022 in the communities around Grand Staircase. Earnings per job also grew by 26%. Both numbers are adjusted for inflation, she said.
“While jobs in travel and tourism may not pay as much as a mining job, there are good-paying jobs and businesses that are coming into these areas,” Lawson said. “That's a really important piece.”
Retiree populations also grew more quickly in places near protected public lands, both in southern Utah and nationwide. People who bring their nest eggs support many parts of the economy, Lawson said, leading to increases in construction, retail and health care.
The numbers highlight an extra benefit the monuments offer Utah beyond preserving natural landscapes, said Jackie Grant, executive director of conservation group Grand Staircase Escalante Partners.
“To see an overall positive trend is just fantastic,” she said. “It's really hard to argue that graph that's going up, up, up, up.”
The monuments also boost the regional economy in ways that aren’t captured in the report, Grant said. The ecosystems they protect produce oxygen for Utah’s air, feed the wildlife that Utahns hunt and clean the water that flows through on its way to Lake Powell and the Colorado River.
“How much is that water worth? How much is it worth to have this land that's not polluted, filtering our water for us?” she said. “We don't know, because there hasn't been a full economic analysis of these types of services.”
Even so, after decades of controversy, there’s still some skepticism in southern Utah about the monuments’ value.
On paper, jobs and incomes have continued to increase, said Kane County Commissioner Celeste Meyeres, but that may not show the full picture. While service jobs have grown significantly, jobs outside that sector have essentially flat-lined. She’s concerned that putting too many eggs into the public lands tourism basket could leave Kane’s economy vulnerable to a potential downturn.
“When we have some economic diversity, then there's more resiliency, there's more nimbleness to respond to varying market forces,” Meyeres said.
Having so much land in the monument could also put the county in a tough spot as it grows, she said.
Just around 10% of Kane County is private property. The rest belongs to the federal or state government. As demand for developable land climbs, she said, it could send housing prices beyond the reach of long-time residents and their families, especially with so many retirees moving in.
“When people who have generational wealth or personal wealth are able to purchase multiple properties, that means the market changes to the point where it becomes less and less possible for just a regular person, if you will, to obtain property,” Meyeres said. “So, we're widening the gap between income levels.”
While the overall population may have increased, she said Kane County is losing working families and seeing fewer kids in its schools. The county school district has reported declining student enrollment in the past few years.
“It's hard to raise a family on most types of hospitality services jobs,” Meyeres said, so families may be forced to look at living in another area that isn’t so tourism-focused.
Bears Ears hasn’t had the impact of Grand Staircase, Lawson said, partially because it was designated in 2016. Still, neighboring San Juan County has seen a small increase in the number of service jobs and in retiree income in the past few years.
In the long term, she said, it’d be reasonable to expect the San Juan County economy could follow a path similar to Garfield and Kane — with more retiree migration and higher incomes — if Bears Ears is given enough runway to make that impact.
Both monuments have been targets of a political tug-of-war, with President Donald Trump significantly reducing their size in 2017. President Joe Biden later restored them in 2021. Advocates worry Trump could remove their protections again during his second term.
A monument’s economic impact also depends on how much surrounding communities choose to leverage that public land as an asset and intentionally try to attract people. Even then, there’s no guarantee.
“A national monument is not necessarily going to be an economic magic bullet,” Lawson said. “It's not going to automatically reverse a community's economic fortunes.”
And those changes may come more slowly in a place like San Juan County, where agriculture and mining continue to represent 10% and 11% of local jobs, respectively.
Native peoples in southeast Utah have been divided over Bears Ears because of concerns about continued access to the sacred land and the medicinal plants they gather there, said San Juan County Commissioner Jamie Harvey, who is also a member of the Navajo Nation.
He’s seen people’s perspectives shift in the past couple of years, though.
“Now the tribe understands, we want tourism. Let's talk more about tourism and managing it carefully so that we all benefit from it.”
Navajo people often generate income by selling traditional crafts like rugs, baskets and jewelry, he said. So, having more potential customers traveling through is a positive step toward allowing residents to celebrate their culture and make a living.
Still, increased tourism comes with a trade-off. Visitors sometimes drive off-road vehicles into areas where they disturb Native cultural sites. Others have vandalized Indigenous rock art.
“That's probably the hard part,” Harvey said, “is controlling that and helping visitors understand, ‘Look, if you're going to come, you're welcome. But we just need your help, doing your part to protect what you're seeing.’”
Bears Ears doesn’t have enough staff to educate and monitor visitors across the 2,112-square-mile monument, he said. The recent federal government shutdown and cuts to public land staffing and funding haven’t helped.
Grant with Grand Staircase Escalante Partners acknowledges the concerns some southern Utah residents may have about how the monuments have restricted access for industries or activities. Still, she believes a lot of the modern pushback is a remnant of the fight surrounding Grand Staircase’s designation three decades ago.
For instance, she pointed out that livestock grazing is still available on 93% of Grand Staircase’s land. And while some future mining opportunities have been blocked, the report indicates the number employed in the mining industry in Garfield and Kane counties has risen since 2001.
“People tend to be influenced by their nostalgia for the past,” Grant said. “It makes it really hard to step back and change their mind about perceptions around the monument.”
