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Kem C. Gardner report: timed entry linked to lower Arches visits but countywide visitor spending rose

Grand County Commission · May 6, 2026
AI-Generated Content: All content on this page was generated by AI to highlight key points from the meeting. For complete details and context, we recommend watching the full video. so we can fix them.

Summary

A Kem C. Gardner Policy Institute analysis presented to the Grand County Commission estimates Arches National Park visitation fell in the timed-entry period while countywide visitor spending and jobs increased; the institute said the park-level declines are model-based estimates and offered full data and slides to commissioners.

Phil Dean, research director and chief economist at the Kem C. Gardner Policy Institute, presented the institute’s analysis of Arches National Park’s timed-entry system and the broader Grand County economy. The institute compared a pre-implementation baseline (2017–2019) to a post-implementation window (2022–2024) and described a mix of observed data and model-based counterfactual estimates.

Dean told the commission that, in inflation-adjusted terms, average annual visitor spending countywide rose from roughly $373 million in the pre-period to about $456 million in the post-period, and that…

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