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Arches National Park Road Improvements Scheduled

nps.gov

Arches National Park will close a popular campground for much of 2017 during a major road reconstruction project. After ten years of planning with the Federal Highways Administration, crews at Arches National Park will begin making improvement to 26 miles of roads and pullouts in the park beginning January 2017.

“This road was built in the late 1950’s and early 1960’s and it was not built on any type of engineered field,” said John Lewis, Chief of Maintenance for Arches. “It is just built right on the existing sand. So for the amount of traffic we are having right now it is inefficient.”

Devil's Garden Campground will close from March through October and hiking areas like Devil's Garden, Delicate Arch and the Windows will occasionally shut down. Most of the construction work will happen overnight.

“The only thing that is there at the end of the road is the camp ground,” he said. “So if we close the campground it allows full night closures so we can get a lot more work done and proceed a lot faster.”

Kate Cannon is Park Superintendent at Arches. She says during the national parks centennial park officials have seen a ten percent increase in visitors this year compared to last year when a record 1.4 million guests visited the park near Moab.

“It is a wonderful thing, but it has its downside in that it is really hard to keep up with the essential custodial work, work on roads and trails and with the maintenance of structures that support visitors,” she said. “It is a big challenge.”

The $24 million project includes the widening of the entrance road to help ease congestion leading off of the main highway into the park.

At 14-years-old, Kerry began working as a reporter for KVEL “The Hot One” in Vernal, Utah. Her radio news interests led her to Logan where she became news director for KBLQ while attending Utah State University. She graduated USU with a degree in Broadcast Journalism and spent the next few years working for Utah Public Radio. Leaving UPR in 1993 she spent the next 14 years as the full time mother of four boys before returning in 2007. Kerry and her husband Boyd reside in Nibley.