Chaco Road: We Won't Pave It, So They Won't Come

The road to Chaco Canyon is a serpentine gravel washboard -- not four-by-four territory by any means but enough to make you wonder in the back of your mind what, exactly, your insurance policy covers while you're taking a dusty turn at 35 miles an hour along a rocky wash.

And it seems that preservationists and tribal members like it that way.

Earlier this week, San Juan County commissioners voted to end the decades-long effort to pave County Road 7950 that leads to Chaco Canyon National Historical Park, after negotiations with the National Park Service, the Navajo Nation and advocacy groups yielded no solution on how to proceed.

County Road 7950, to stay a hard road a-winding (NPS)

The county, of course, wanted not only the $800,000 in federal grant money, which it had already started spending on the road project, and pocketed the rest. It also wanted the increased park traffic -- and all the tourist revenue it would bring.

But the pavement's opponents argued just the opposite: They want fewer people to go to Chaco. The Chaco Alliance said that layering CR7950 with asphalt  and aggregate would send Chaco the way of Mesa Verde, making it a bona fide highway attraction, which would lead to quotas on visitors and tours requiring reservations. In this view, nearby RV dumps and curio shops selling rubber tomahawks would not be far off.

It's hard to endorse the idea that fewer people should see one of the most spectacular and important ancient sites in the United States. But there's a lot to be said for letting the journey be the destination, for allowing the wildness of a place to introduce itself to you one mile at a time, over hardpan slopes and rutted curves.

As with all debates over Western public lands, the matter comes down to access, and we already have that. Offering inducements is another thing altogether.

And probably the most significant result of this decision has to do with visitors that nearly everyone wants kept at bay: Oil and gas developers would love nothing more than wide, hard access to the canyonlands, and for taxpayers to pave the way for them.