Dean M. Chriss
Delicate Arch, Sunset
(Click image to enlarge)
In the early 1980s I visited Delicate Arch countless times. Back then the
trailhead parking lot was just a graveled pull off beside the washboard and dusty
dirt road leading to it and places beyond. I usually went in September after
kids were back in school. With family vacation season over there was seldom
anyone else at the arch for sunset. Being alone in such grandeur is something
very special, and I didn't appreciate how special it was at the time. The place never got old and never failed to amaze me. If you held your
breath it was possible to hear the
lightest breeze moving over the rocks. It was that quiet. On rare
occasions when the air was still you could hear your own breathing, and if you
held your breath, you could hear your heartbeat. I
always stayed until after the last golden rays faded from the landscape and made
my way back without a flashlight, which inhibits night vision. Occasionally there would be
a few others sharing the view. It didn't matter much
because they typically came for the same experience and were usually quiet,
polite, and respectful of others. Over the years as the crowds grew the people
became less respectful, and more self centered, standing in the scene for long
periods of time to have their photos taken or climbing around on the rock
surfaces near the arch, as if they are the only rocks in Arches National Park.
Good friends who owned a motel in Moab told me that no one visits in October so
I made my visits later. They were right, and I was again able to visit Delicate
Arch in peace. Then everything changed quickly and dramatically.
For the sake of tourist dollars, the town of Moab and state of Utah began to
very aggressively promote tourism.
Slick advertising campaigns began putting photos and drawings of Delicate Arch on
everything one can imagine. From freeway signs to Utah license
plates, to advertisements in print and on television, Delicate Arch was
everywhere. By the early 1990s this
drew too many people for the town and nearby national parks to accommodate,
but greed knows no bounds. Area businesses came up with noisy, smelly and hair
raising motorized tours of nearby public lands that were once quiet, magnificent,
and seldom visited. They built micro breweries, junk shops, and
tourist traps of every description including the Moab Giants Dinosaur Park, complete
with fake dinosaurs. They did anything and everything to draw more people to
Moab. Edward Abbey once said "Growth for the sake of growth is the ideology
of the cancer cell". Indeed, the cancer of greed
consumed Arches National Park and metastasized to countless wild and pristine
places in America.
The only thing
one cannot find in Moab now is concern
about the damage inflicted on the national parks and surrounding BLM
lands in the name of tourist dollars. The town of Moab itself has become a horrific, traffic
jammed, abomination. Visiting today anytime the weather is reasonably comfortable is as enjoyable
as driving through downtown Manhattan at rush hour. By the middle 2010s there there was sometimes
a two hour wait to get into Arches National Park and the number of cars in
the park could exceed the number of parking spaces in the park. After trying various schemes to manage this,
visitors must now reserve time slot during which they
can enter the park. The road to the Delicate Arch trailhead is now paved, as is the enormous
and always overflowing parking lot where people circle waiting for a parking space. By 2008 sunsets at Delicate Arch became known to park service employees as
the "nightly melee", often attended by "hundreds". All of these people jam
themselves into a place that
once felt crowded with ten. Sadly, future generations will not know
peace and solitude in any beautiful or desirable place. Today America's
national parks are often the antithesis of what they were meant to be.
I captured this photograph of Delicate Arch on film in late September of 1996. It was very crowded
and difficult to photograph due to people posing under the arch and walking
or climbing into the scene. Instead of having a sublime natural experience
and capturing some photographs, the experience has become one that is not
worth enduring for the sake of any photograph. On the crowded twilight hike back
to the parking lot and in the moving traffic jam headed back to Moab, I accepted
the fact that
Delicate Arch
and is dead. It is still exists and the sunset still makes it glow, but it
has become just another overcrowded ride in the amusement park that Arches
National Park has become. For me and perhaps others who knew how special this place
was, the old photograph
above brings back very fond memories.
I was able to capture a new high resolution digital image of Delicate Arch
without excessive crowds after a winter storm in
February 2022. I am thankful
for that experience, but I do not expect to go back again.