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Zion National Park Planning To "Rehabilitate" Mount Carmel Highway

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Zion National Park officials say it's time for the Mount Carmel Highway to be rehabilitated. Photo by Ken Lund via flickr.

Talk about ambitious. The folks at Zion National Park are planning to do the first substantial rehabilitation of the Mount Carmel Highway in nearly 80 years, something that will not be an overnight job.

Indeed, right now the crystal ball envisions a two-year project, as the work would involve rehabilitating, restoring, and resurfacing approximately 9 miles of road from Canyon Junction to the East Entrance (excluding the Zion Mt. Carmel Tunnel).

True, this isn't a massive project like the ongoing rehab of the Going-to-the-Sun Road in Glacier National Park or that of the General's Highway in Sequoia National Park. But if you've ever driven the Mount Carmel Highway in Zion, you know about its switchbacks, steep grades, and the beautiful stonework performed by the CCC crews way back when.

As might be expected, time and traffic have taken a decided toll on the red asphalt highway and now it's time to address the deterioration. With that in mind, Zion officials are embarking on an environmental assessment to determine the best approach.

The proposed project is planned for two years. The first year would focus on the road from Canyon Junction to the west entrance into the tunnel and is proposed for fall 2009. The second year would complete the project from the east entrance to the tunnel to the east park boundary and is proposed for fall 2011.

The public will have two opportunities to comment on this project: first during scoping (now), and again following the release of the EA. Park officials currently are in the scoping phase of this project and invite you to submit your comments. If you wish to comment, you can do so at this site or you can mail comments to Zion National Park, Zion Mt. Carmel Road Rehabilitation, Springdale, UT 84767.

Comments are being accepted until December 11, 2008.

For more information on this proposed project contact Kezia Nielsen, Environmental Protection Specialist, at (435) 772-0211 or visit the NPS planning website.

Comments

Having just visited beautiful Zion and having driven on this road in Oct 2008, it was easy to see that the road has been repaired and patched a lot and needs to be re-surfaced. But I think the switch backs and steep grades should remain. I drove a small RV, a pick-up truck camper, and didn't have any problems. The switch backs and steep grades add to the character of the place. Maybe the road needs more "turn outs". The large and long RVs have no business being on this road anyway because of the tunnel. The red road surface does add to the character of the park, but if it costs significantly more to resurface the road "red", then it may not be worth keeping the "red". The money may be better spent making the road surface more durable. I suspect that the federal government budgets for national parks is going to get very tight so every dollar needs to be spent carefully.


Hey Buzzman, not to worry, no plans to change the gradients or switchbacks. And I'd bet the red asphalt will remain as well. I don't think it costs significantly more. More pullouts would be nice, though not sure where to squeeze them in....


So Frank, is it not also hypocritical to call for the Mount Carmel Road to revert to its "former road-less condition" and yet use a computer, drive to work, and take advantage of all the latest technologies and conveniences of today's world?

On one hand you seem to detest all infrastructure in parks, and yet have no qualms about using that infrastructure outside the parks.


The presence of roads in our national parks is the primary - if not the only - way that most people visit them. Without visitors, the parks would have little constituency. Without a constituency, the parks would be overrun by those would would destroy them. Do you really think that so many parks would have been created if people had not been able to visit them, appreciate them, and support their creation? Or perhaps you believe that only those who are hearty enough to be able to hike into your roadless parks should be able to enjoy them. Sorry about that young kids, older people, handicapped people, and anyone who can't undertake a 50 mile hike into the wilderness... you're not welcome to visit our roadless parks.

When I was a kid, my parents took me to the parks - on roads! We didn't hike (although I always wanted to). As an adult, I've spent virtually every vacation with my family in the parks. We always hike and my son has become far more attuned to nature and the importance of protecting it and of protecting these cathedrals than I was at his age. He will be a vocal park supporter for the rest of his life.

If you believe that the parks would enjoy even a fraction of the public support that they receive now without people having the ability to drive to and through them, you are living in a fantasy world.


Frank –

Although I certainly respect the high regard you hold for areas such as parks, Vince has a good grasp of the political realities involved in setting those areas aside in the first place – along with the even more pressing realities confronting those areas today. A broad constituency will become more critical than ever if our parks are to survive.

I'd suggest that we'd have few parks today without the roads and development that made it possible for people to get to—and into—those areas. That public awareness of the wonders contained in previously inaccessible areas helped build the support needed for many of the parks we have today.

As an example, consider the political battle over the establishment of Crater Lake National Park in 1902. There were people in positions of power who opposed the concept of any additional national parks. Here’s what happened when supporters of the Crater Lake bill tried to move it along in Congress, taken from Crater Lake's Administrative History:

Despite the favorable report by the committee, the bill encountered opposition from House Speaker David B. Henderson of Iowa. Because there were a number of national parks and battlefield bills before the House at the time Henderson refused to recognize any of them. Thus, when Representative John F. Lacey of Iowa attempted to call up the bill for consideration by the Committee of the Whole on March 14, Henderson refused to permit the bill to be debated.

The bill was finally allowed to come up for a vote only after the personal intervention of President Teddy Roosevelt. Would that, and other parks, have been established if they had been designated as roadless areas? Good question, but I suspect not.

Do we need wilderness areas where human impacts are minimized to the greatest extent possible? Absolutely. Has development gotten out of hand in some parks? There's a topic that can fuel some lively debate, but I'd say "yes." I'd suggest that a balance of wilderness and carefully designed access and facilities for visitors is a reasonable goal for the system as a whole. We haven't always succeeded, but we're a lot better off with what we have vs. few parks at all.


True indeed, the railroads exerted enormous pressure in the formative years of the National Park System to see that roads linked railheads to parks, that lodges be built so those passengers would have somewhere to sleep and eat once they reached the parks.

But I think the "original intent" as laid out by Frank can be questioned. Indeed, there was clear intent early on that vehicles be accommodated in the parks. Interior Secretary Franklin Lane saw to that when he outlined, on May 13, 1918, essentially how the National Park Service should operate. Along with stressing that the parks "must be maintained in absolutely unimpaired form for the use of future generations," Secretary Lane noted that roads, trails and other infrastructure should be installed with attention to complementing, not detracting from, the landscape.

Beyond that, he wrote that, "All outdoor sports which may be maintained consistently with the observation of the safeguards thrown around the national parks by law will be heartily indorsed (sic) and aided whenever possible. Mountain climbing, horseback riding, walking, motoring, swimming, boating, and fishing will ever be the favorite sports."

Even with that understood, though, it'd be hard to disagree that industrial tourism is a constant threat to the parks' landscape and, I think it can be argued in some quarters, to the national park experience. But what is the perfect national park experience? What should it be?

What would be a moderate approach to road construction/maintenance in the parks? Some would argue that already there's a bear minimum of roads and, at the same time, thousands and thousands and thousands of acres of wilderness or de facto wilderness in which one can escape asphalt and fumes. (Of course, there also are some roads, such as the existing Carbon River Road in Mount Rainier's northwestern corner, that nature has been trying to remove ever since it was built.)

Without roads such as the Going-to-the-Sun Road, the Mount Carmel Road, and Yellowstone's Grand Loop Road, how many visitors would be deprived incredible vistas?

For those who would remove roads, would they support mass transit in the form, for instance, of light rail, or should all signs of these corridors be removed?

These are not simple questions, and I would guess -- in light of all the economic, access, and environmental issues -- there are no simple answers.


While this section pavement is truly a Road to Nowhere, as the "development" east of the tunnel along Hwy. 9 will verify, I'm as guilty as anybody of utilizing it as a pass-through to Bryce. While we can debate the merits of the original intent and whose doorstep to lay credit / blame upon, the current status of the roadway is inadequate to continue to serve its purpose, both relating to the overall condition and the size of the available pavement. But who in the early 20th C envisioned all the goofs parading around the country in their Ford Expeditions and Chevy Tahoes anyway?

Specific to this example, the Mount Carmel Road that is, I'm rather dubious that the overall visitation to Zion would suffer much of a decline should the tunnel be incapacitated for any reason. While definitely not convenient, other avenues exist to access the "main" southern entrance. And by far, the greatest tourist access is off I-15, not US 89, especially all those day-trippers from the Vegas saloons. Evidence that Springdale is a literal boom-town when compared to the entirety of the eastern pathway. So let's not play the panic card and correlate a drastic decline in revenue for Zion if indeed the highway were rerouted. A decline? Most certainly. Park closure? Not on your life.

That said, I personally don't favor removing existing roadways from any of the NPS units, but I, unlike SO many other contributors to this site, have no employment history with the park service, so maybe my opinion isn't worth the computer it's typed on. I most certainly do support limitation of expanding the network of roadways, preferably limiting expansion to ZERO. But unless there's a plan afoot to let nature reclaim, as She has done to so many of the old logging roads for example, then periodic roadway improvements are just as important within the system as they are without. Or should we start debating the merits of maintaining the Interstate and US Highway networks as well, as they too require the evil byproducts of the petroleum industry in order for us to maintain our mobility as a nation; bicycle, car, or cross-trainers be damned?

By the way, there are a few routes available to link Toroweep (or do you say Tuweep?) and the rims of the Grand Canyon to the other Utah parks that radiate southeast from the greater-St. George area. But they're most definitely NOT highways. Beautiful, scenic, kidney-bustin' backroads that themselves are as great an adventure as exploring the parks was intended to be, but we as a people have this notion that we should be able to get any and everywhere as quickly and conveniently as we can. It's our Divine right!!! How dare anyone inconvenience us by not paving every inch of the world so that we can use it, maybe once in a lifetime?


Here's a short excerpt about the project, which I find encouraging:

Pavement rehabilitation would likely involve in-place recycling of the existing deteriorated pavement, followed by an overlay of new asphalt paving. The new pavement would later be covered with a red cinder chip-seal.

In-place recycling of the existing pavement at least sounds like a good idea, and I'd certainly vote for continuing the use of the red cinder chip-seal. In this setting, that treatment helps reduce the visual intrusion of the pavement, and perhaps helps reinforce subconsciously the idea that people using this roadway are in a special place.

Kurt's original story above includes a link where you can make comments on the project to the park.


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