Story and Photo by David Condos | KUER

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.

Read more at KUER.org.

This article is published through the Utah News Collaborative, a partnership of news organizations in Utah that aims to inform readers across the state.