Visitor Circulation Study at Bryce Canyon National Park

Warren, Brian

The Visitor Circulation Study attempts to answer two basic questions about Bryce Canyon's visitor activities: First, where do visitors go in Bryce Canyon? Second, What do visitors do while they are in the park? This paper will discuss the goals of the project in detail, the three methodologies employed to gather data and the results in this study. What remains is to determine what decisions visitors make when they are unattended by Park Service or other park personnel. In Bryce, these activities are limited to driving, biking, and hiking tours of the park. The vehicle traffic portion of the study yielded three main conclusions. First, vehicle traffic in the park is spread much more evenly across the viewpoints than was readily apparent. Second, the proportion of visitors that are from Utah is very low, averaging around 6%. Third, intersection analysis showed that 59% of visitors stopped at the Visitor Center. This percentage is probably low, placing overall usage of the Visitor Center potentially much higher. The vast majority of foot traffic occurs between Sunrise Point and Sunset Point (on the Rim Trail). The trails between Inspiration and Bryce Points and between Sunrise and Fairyland Points received very sparse usage. Of hikers using the Navajo Loop, the dominant pattern is to descend by Wall Street and return to the rim by either the Queens Garden Trail or Twin Bridges. Peekaboo Loop is used by few hikers relative to Navaho Loop, with only 10% of hikers reaching the canyon floor actually taking the trail.