On the Monday after Easter, I hopped into the Silver Bullet in Green River, Utah, rolled onto I-70 and headed toward Moab. I had planned on finding a coffee shop in which to sit and ponder the evolution of the ranching-turned-mining-turned-tourist town. I figured it would be relatively quiet, since the annual Easter Jeep Safari had ended the previous day.
As I neared the turnoff to Moab, I came upon a huge Ram truck pulling a trailer. On the trailer was a lifted, balloon-tired Toyota Tacoma that had been converted into a “rock-crawler.” On the back of the Toyota was a rack with four high-end mountain bikes. Taped to the rear-end of this vehicular monstrosity — the epitome of burning fossil fuels for sport — a hand-written cardboard sign read: Going to Moab.
But of course they were. And they were not alone: Before long I became a tiny link in a long chain of traffic zooming toward Moab at 70 mph. It was a Monday morning, yet already clusters of SUVs and vanlife vans huddled around the trailheads on either side of the highway. A few people were sliding down the sandy slope across from Arches National Park. I turned onto Potash Road to check out progress on the Atlas uranium mill cleanup before continuing into town.
The sheer number of vehicles on the Main drag was baffling. Large, shiny, late-model automobiles and trucks — along with a Tesla or two — mingled with side-by-side OHVs. My car was by far the oldest, smallest, least-expensive vehicle out there. My potential pondering places were all packed with people who appeared to be from a demographic I would have associated more with Disneyland than with the spandex- and Carhartt-heavy Moab of the 1990s or early 2000s. I don’t think I saw anyone actually riding a bike.
It was overwhelming. So I got my coffee (and Milt’s cheeseburger and tots) to go, and fled southward.
***
Hang out in or around southeastern Utah for long and you will inevitably hear a popular version of the Modern Moab Creation Myth. It goes something like this: Moab was a sleepy Mormon farming and ranching town on the banks of the Colorado River until Charlie Steen made his Mi Vida uranium find in the 1950s, after which it became a bustling and boisterous mining town.
Then in the 1980s the environmentalists — most notably the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance, or SUWA — emerged to chase off the mining industry and the remaining cattle ranchers. That opened the door for mountain bikers to invade, with the greens’ blessing, which in turn paved the way for the industrial-scale, outdoor recreation/amenities economy to overtake the town. The New West had swallowed up the Old West, turning Moab into an unrecognizable, soulless facsimile of its past, more authentic self.
Like most myths, this one contains nuggets of truth. Yes, the uranium industry withered at about the same time the Groff Brothers, locals who had lost their uranium jobs, opened a bike shop and started leading mountain biking tours in Moab. Yes, initially environmental groups welcomed the rise of what we now know as the amenities economy, seeing it as a preferable, less-damaging alternative to the extractive industries that had ravaged much of the West for the past century and some. And the myth can serve as a cautionary tale for communities that may be looking to supplement their economies with outdoor recreation tourism.
But what is the myth cautioning against, exactly?
***
Back in the 1980s, when a lot of one-time extractive communities were moving toward tourism, recreation, amenities-based economies and the development that often accompanies such a shift, a slogan emerged: “I’d rather see a cow than a condo.”
This meme (in modern parlance) is catchy and easy to subscribe to. I, for one, vastly prefer a pasture full of frolicking cows to a herd of McMansions gathered around cul de sacs, or multi-million-dollar spreads jutting up from a ridgeline. But the slogan is also packed with meaning — not all of it so cute.
The “cow” represents the “Old West” and its “traditional” rural livelihoods, or the extractive economies. The “condo” stands for the “New West” and the urban-esque amenities-based economy and all it entails. I’ve seen the cow vs. condo slogan bandied about in relation to Moab, but maybe a more appropriate version would be: “I’d rather see a uranium mine than a mountain biker,” because though the former may damage the landscape, the latter — and all that follows — can crush a community’s soul.
It is a stark, zero-sum, either/or, binary proposition. If cows go away, condos will inevitably move into their place; if the traditional cultures of the Old West die, the New West will rise up, along with its woke, gentrifying, van-life denizens — or so the trope goes. It follows, then, that if you don’t want a bunch of condos sprouting from the fields, you’d better keep the cows around. And the best way to keep cows around is to allow ranchers to graze them cheaply and unhindered on public lands.
In these myths usually there is a clear dividing line between the cows and the condos, between the old community and the new one — a single event or phenomenon that catalyzed the transformation. Maybe it’s the development of a ski resort. Maybe it’s the arrival of Californians or other outsiders — as if they all stormed in at once. Maybe it’s one of those Top 10 Towns articles. Maybe it’s the eviction of cattle from a riparian zone on public lands. In Moab, or so the myth says, it was the coinciding rise of mainstream mountain biking and the environmental movement and the fall of the uranium industry.
This framing is important to the myth because it gives folks a villain — everyone loves to hate a specific bad guy — and it gives an illusion of control over the situation. Maybe we can’t save Moab, but by blocking catalyzing events in other places, we can perhaps save them from a similar fate: Don’t let them develop that ski area or build some mountain biking trails or open the boutique coffee shop or chase the cows off public land, because if you do, you’ll inevitably wake up one day and find yourself plumb-dab in the middle of the next Moab.
When folks pushed back against the designation of Bears Ears National Monument because it would allegedly lead to nearby communities becoming Moab-ized, they were simply leaning on an expanded version of the cows vs. condos trope. Because a national monument would stifle mining, drilling, and grazing, they argued, it would eventually kill the sacred extractive cow, which would allow the condos to invade. By this twisted logic, stopping the national monument would also keep the amenities economy and attendant gentrification from advancing.
In reality, there is never a clear dividing line, never a defined before and after, just as there is no such thing as an Old West or New West or an urban-rural divide.
***
Even before ol’ Chuck Steen showed up, Moabites were looking to build a tourist industry in their little piece of slickrock paradise. When Arches National Monument was designated in 1929, the Moab Times-Independent predicted it would “prove a big boost in exploiting the scenic resources of southeastern Utah.” Local leaders supported the establishment of a national monument at Arches in 1929, for example, because they thought it would draw more visitors and supplement the agricultural economy. And visitation to the national monument slowly increased, but remained at just a handful of folks per day for the two decades following its establishment.
Then the uranium frenzy exploded in the early 1950s. Local officials worried at first that it would stifle tourism, since sightseeing visitors might not want to fight with prospectors for a limited number of motel rooms. Ultimately, however, the extractive boom nourished the nascent amenities economy. Some prospectors were actually miners; most were more like uranium tourists. The New Yorker, Ebony, and other big news outlets sent correspondents to southeastern Utah to cover the inpouring of Steen-wannabes, and introduced millions of readers to Moab and the natural wonders of the region.
In 1947, before the boom, Arches saw about 5,000 visitors all year; that number jumped to 31,000 visitors in 1954, following media attention to Steen’s find. Taxpayer-funded road crews scraped thousands of miles of roads across the surrounding public lands to facilitate uranium prospecting. While hopeful “uraniumaires” did use those routes, most soon became far more important as Jeep trails for sightseers (and, ultimately, for mountain bikers, too).
In fact, in the 1960s — while uranium was still king — Moab locals launched an effort to exploit all of those new roads to draw more tourists. In 1969, Dick Wilson, a reporter for the local Times-Independent, wrote: “I’m of the opinion that as Aspen has become the world-famous skiing Mecca, so Moab can become the Jeep Capitol of America.” Later that year, at the urging of locals, the Bureau of Land Management established the Slickrock Trail for motorbikes. At the time, Arches National Monument (it became a national park in 1971), was drawing more than 150,000 visitors per year, with an additional 26,000 visiting the new Canyonlands National Monument nearby.
The mining boom further distinguished Moab from its neighbors by building up infrastructure that would later accommodate the amenities economy. Perhaps more importantly, it also disrupted the Mormon culture. One mid-1950s observer noted that the sudden influx of men had diversified the gene pool, saving Moab from becoming “the most inbred town in all of Utah.” The result was a less insular town in which you could actually order a beer with your burrito.
In other words, the seeds of the New West amenities economy were planted before the terms were even invented, while the Old West extractive economy was still booming, and decades before the Groffs opened Rim Cyclery and started riding Stumpjumpers on the old Slickrock motorbike trail.
***
While my family spent a great deal of time in southeastern Utah while I was growing up, we didn’t hang out in Moab much. My family aimed a bit further south in Utah: Cedar Mesa, Comb Wash, maybe the Needles District in Canyonlands. If we did venture further north to visit Arches, or Dead Horse Point, or Island in the Sky, we wouldn’t linger long in Moab, because that’s just not what we did back then. Towns were for filling up the tank and that’s about it. (Bates Wilson’s old, red, Willy’s Jeep made much more of an impression on a seven-year-old me than the town of Moab).
In my teens, I started going to Moab each spring to compete in a two-day road bike race with stages through Arches (that wouldn’t happen anymore), on the Potash Road, and around the town park. That was in the mid- to late-eighties, so at the very beginning of the mythical transformation. Moab was still a mining town, but it was also already a tourist town and outdoor recreation town, too, complete with a fair share of hippies and dirtbags and groovy grub joints like Guido’s and Dos Amigos and Milt’s Stop & Eat (which not only still exists, but appears to be thriving).
I first rode my pumpkin orange Stumpjumper Sport SE on Moab’s trails in 1988 or ’89 and went to Ed Abbey’s memorial just outside Arches in spring of ‘89. At the time you could still camp at the Slickrock trailhead or just pull off Potash Road somewhere and throw your sleeping bag down in the bushes and no one would bother you. It was an appealing town — a rustic little red-rock-ringed oasis of irrigated-landscapes where a desert-loving teenager like myself could imagine living one day.
I miss the Moab of those days. I really do. I even miss the Moab of the early 2000s, when you could avoid the big crowds by going there in mid-winter or mid-summer, when housing was still affordable, and when the town retained a bit more of its old funkiness. It’s improved in many ways — it’s got a great library and arts center and some good food — but it’s also an overpriced, increasingly gentrified zoo, reverberating with the incessant buzz of OHVs.
But to blame the changes on environmentalists, mountain bikers, Rim Cyclery, or the arrival of Eddie McStiff’s brewpub in the early 1990s is simply barking up the wrong tree. Similarly, Moab didn’t become what it is because the uranium mining industry died, or because newcomer urbanites chased the cows away. In fact, the cows are still around: According to federal data, Grand County is home to 3,200 cows, compared to 3,700 in 1983, a margin that is just as likely to be a result of normal fluctuations as to a decline in the ranching industry.
Indeed, the extractive industry — or the Old West, if you must — is still alive and well in Moab. There’s a large-scale copper mine in the Lisbon Valley (which, as I mentioned, is looking for workers), a couple active potash operations, and a number of producing oil and gas wells. A half-dozen proposals to extract lithium in the area are on the table, and uranium mining companies are looking to restart old mines or establish new ones on thousands upon thousands of acres of public land mining claims. Even the massive cleanup Atlas uranium mill cleanup site, where big machinery excavates radioactive waste and contaminated material and ships it by rail to a depository up the road, goes about virtually unnoticed by the hordes of visitors that pass by it each day.
Moab has managed to have both cows and condos, both mountain bikers and uranium miners, both OHV-driving MAGA Republicans and progressive, e-bike pedaling liberals.
***
When I stopped that morning for coffee in Moab, the bright sun was chasing the morning chill away. Fruit trees and the forsythia bloomed and the first leaves emerged from the cottonwoods’ long branches. Spring had arrived in Moab weeks before coming to most of the surrounding lands. Even with the din of motors and the crowds, I couldn’t help but marvel at what a special place Moab really is. On the one hand, I can see why other communities fret over becoming the “next Moab.” On the other hand, I can’t really see how the Moab phenomenon could be duplicated somewhere else, simply because there is no other place quite like Moab in terms of location, climate, surrounding public lands, water, and history.
I made my way south, choosing to avoid the highway and instead drive slowly through the Spanish Valley rural-suburban sprawl, where townhomes and hodgepodge developments mingle with industrial yards and alfalfa fields. I flipped on the radio just in time to hear the job announcement: The Lisbon Valley Copper Mine was looking to hire more workers.
The Creation Myth of Moab is a persistent myth that is influencing public lands debates all over the region. And like so many persistent myths out here it ignores inconvenient truths and nuance, and is likely just reinforcing historic negative outcomes, rather than acting as a learning opportunity that leads to better ones.
One could argue that Moab isn't the place it is today because of the National Parks, or protected public lands won by "enviros", but despite of them. The majority of use in the Moab area has nothing to do with the parks, other than as background scenery for whatever else people want to do (I think Moab BLM outside the parks sees some 3M visitors a year? Somebody good with numbers (ahem) should check that). For decades, Moab's identity has been a place where everything goes--Want to do some mineral exploration? Here's a shovel! Go rock hounding, or better yet, poke around a little for some arrowheads? Whatever, nobody will know! Target shooting? Line 'em up! Rock climbing or rock crawling? Let's do both! Want to basejump off a slackline and land in your side-by-side to drive out to your RV parked in the crypto on the point where you can cut down some inconveniently situated junipers in order to get a better view? Game on! Nobody cares, its OUR land! And, unfortunately, for many decades the BLM, the counties, and the powers that be either directly supported that mantra through more and more "amenities", or just turned a blind eye. And now those uses, and the behavior, is entrenched, and much harder to pull back. And the hordes just keep on coming, wanting their piece of the free for all that they've heard so much about.
If the enviros that the Myth-expounders blame for today's Moab were actually as successful as people like to pretend they were, there would be more Wilderness (there is currently zero acres of designated Wilderness in the Moab Zone east of the Green River), fewer roads, and better management of the cultural, ecological, water, and wilderness resources in all the areas of the Moab Zone that aren't named Arches or Canyonlands. Instead, we're left with a situation were the BLM gets pilloried for any attempt they make to rein in the madness and bring the Moab Zone back to a more sustainable situation. There are so many who long for their Moab of old (when there was less of everything except for healthy public lands), but fail to realize that in order to attain some semblance of that, we're all going to have to agree that we can't do everything everywhere anymore.
I appreciate your nuanced analysis of the situation in Moab today, and the interesting historical background. I was one of those enviros who, back in the '80s, was touting recreation as a partial answer to a declining resource-extraction economy (or one we hoped was declining, anyway). I think SUWA and the other Utah green groups were pretty careful to advocate for the kinds of recreation that had minimal impact on the land -- basically dispersed, nonmotorized travel in the roadless backcountry, along with the usual auto-based tourism based largely in Arches and Canyonlands. None of us foresaw the rise of social media and the whopping impact it had on outdoor recreation, nor the Mighty 5 advertising campaign which spiked visitation to the parks, nor the phenomenal rise in motorized recreation and the whole industry it spawned. Soren (comment below) is absolutely right in that had we designated a few wilderness areas around Moab (Millcreek canyon, Behind the Rocks, Harts Draw, Labyrinth Canyon East, and suchlike), we would at least have some refugia from the motorized mayhem.
That said, I've been interested in my daughter's experience as a recent Moab immigrant -- she finds it a pretty congenial place, with many community-oriented organizations, lots of interesting events going on, and enough folks her age to make for a good social scene. She bristles at the usual characterization of the town as a hellhole and says you have to get away from Main Street to see what is really going on there. Could be something for your further investigation, Jonathan!