Tourism in the Mesa Verde region is starting to fall behind the 2000 level, which was already below 1999 visitation figures. Other visitor destinations in the West have dropped further sooner.

Will Morris, chief of interpretation at the park, reported Mesa Verde’s May visitation was off 3,984 visits compared with May 2000. Last year’s slow spring was just beginning to take off in May; this 7 percent drop in May 2001 virtually wipes out the increases posted earlier this calendar year.

Year-to-date figures for the park through May show 109,101 visits, 211 fewer than the 109,312 visits during the same period in 2000.

Through April, however, local visitation appeared to be rebounding from last year. Mesa Verde’s 2001 visititation was running 7.2 percent ahead of 2000 and the month of April posted a 2.8 percent increase over the previous April. The Anasazi Heritage Center, according to curator Susan Thomas, saw 11.1 percent more visitors in April 2001.

In the rest of the West, however, tourism was already in trouble by May.

Tom Wade of the National Park Service, who works with public-use statistics in Denver, said Friday by phone that, while park visits nationwide were up a scant 1.3 percent through April, the Intermountain Region was already showing a 2.4 percent decline in visitation by May 1.

Loss leaders through April were Grand Canyon National Park (off 6.0 percent), Canyonlands National Park (6.5 percent down) and Rocky Mountain National Park (showing a 7.6 percent drop from the previous year).

The decline at Rocky Mountain, only hours from metropolitan Denver, argues against gas prices being the sole culprit; travelers do not seem to be switching from distant parks to nearby sites to save gas.