How Bryce Became a National Park
Near Bryce Canyon, Utah
For most of its history this astonishing place was known only to the Paiute, a handful of ranchers, and the people of the surrounding towns. That began to change in the early nineteen hundreds, when photographs and word of mouth carried the hoodoos out to a wider world. Protection came in stages.
On the eighth of June, nineteen twenty three, President Warren Harding set the area aside as Bryce Canyon National Monument, giving it federal protection for the first time. Boosters, the railroad, and Utah leaders pushed for more, arguing that the sheer strangeness of the landscape deserved the highest tier of protection. Their phrase for it was unusual scenic beauty.
Their campaign worked. On the twenty fifth of February, nineteen twenty eight, Bryce Canyon National Park was formally established, making it Utah's second national park after Zion. What had been, in a rancher's words, a hell of a place to lose a cow was now, by act of the federal government, a place worth preserving forever.
In the century since, visitation has climbed into the millions each year, and the little towns that once struggled to grow crops here now build their livelihoods on people coming to stand at the rim.
