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.