In 1995, the year before the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument was designated in southern Utah, recorded visitation to the BLM-managed area via its northern entrance was 444,000.

In 1999, visitation was 1.14 million, according to a spokesperson for the BLM/Forest Service interagency office in the town of Escalante.

Whether tourism will jump similarly in Montezuma County if a new national monument is designated here is uncertain, but local leaders expect to see a surge in visitors — and they aren’t sure the area is prepared for it.

The possibility of a national monument being created in the near future jumped dramatically Thursday when Sen. Ben Night-horse Camp-bell dropped legislation he had been sponsoring to create the Canyon of the Ancients National Conservation Area on 164,000 acres west of Cortez. A hearing that had been scheduled on the bill April 13 has been canceled.

Rep. Scott McInnis, who is sponsoring a companion bill in the House, has not pulled his bill, but no hearing has been set on it and the congressman won’t be pushing it, according to his press secretary, Josh Penry.

"We’re not going to push the issue, but at the same time we’re not giving up on it," Penry said Monday. "We’re going to continue our dialogue with the affected parties."

Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt has stated repeatedly that the area’s numerous Ancestral Puebloan ruins need greater protection, either through a national monument designation or as a national conservation area.

The former, more restrictive designation can be applied by the president under the 1906 Antiquities Act, while the latter is created through congressional legislation.

Members of the Southwest Colorado Landowners Association, a multiple-use advocacy group which is opposed to either designation, welcomed Campbell’s announcement and have vowed to fight any presidential action.

However, some other locals fear the demise of Campbell’s bill means an automatic national monument — and worry about the ramifications of such a status change for the remote, rugged terrain.

Carla Harper, the county’s assistant federal-lands coordinator, said the county has concerns about how the local roads will handle increased traffic if a monument is created. Over the years, the county has had many problems maintaining the road to Hovenweep National Monument.

"It could be a benefit if the feds are going to start keeping the roads up more," she said. "But a lot of times you still have to go over a county road to get to the public lands.

"Our road budget is going to be the same, but the roads will need more upkeep."

Cortez Mayor Joe Keck said Monday he believes a national monument designation would bring "substantially more people."

"I would think we’d get a boost in tourism," he said. "One of my concerns was, at whose expense? We have a little diversity in our economy now, with agriculture, grazing, and CO2 — which is pretty critical to the tax base of the county.

"If they don’t allow those kinds of activities, we’ll probably get an increase in tourism and a decrease in agriculture over time."

Studies done at the University of Colorado have shown that locals begin to resent tourism if it comprises 30 percent or more of their economy, Keck said. A study done recently for the county found that tourism constitutes approximately 17 percent of the local economy.

"You get sort of a backlash because the local residents can no longer do the things they enjoy doing on public lands," he said. "Traffic and congestion get worse.

"I think the NCA provided a chance to reach some sort of balance where you could do a little more resource-protection while allowing multiple uses. Maybe a national monument can, but I’m kind of scared of presidential proclamations."

Babbitt has said that carbon-dioxide extraction and cattle-grazing would be compatible with a BLM-managed national monument. However, CO2 officials worry that they might not be allowed to drill new wells within a national monument, and some locals fear losing their historic uses of the land.

Lynn Dyer, tourism coordinator for the local Umbrella Tourism Committee, agreed that a national monument will lure many new visitors.

"I think if it’s a monument or a national park, it’s going to have a lot more publicity than if it was just a conservation area," she said. "It probably would draw a lot more attention and a lot more visitation. It certainly seems to have done that to the town of Escalante.

"The good news is we’ll see more business. The bad news is, if the community isn’t ready for it, it can have a negative impact on the visitor experience."

Although it’s too early to know what will happen, she emphasized, if a national monument is declared, planning will be critical.

"My biggest concern is to make sure if it’s declared a national monument, that there is a plan in place not only for the way it’s administered, but on the part of the county and towns to make sure they’re ready to handle the impact of the increased visitation."

The vast majority of Montezuma County’s visitors rate their experience here as very positive, Dyer said. They find local people friendly, helpful and non-pretentious.

"If we get in a situation where we’re overwhelmed with visitation, some of that, without proper planning, might go away," she said.

Another concern will be designing the monument — if one is created — so it offers recreational opportunities to all types of visitors, she said. The McElmo Dome area, like the Grand Staircase-Escalante, is sprawling and rugged, without many "centerpieces" to focus visitor interest.

"A lot of Escalante is pretty isolated," Dyer said. "People go and see it and realize there isn’t much they can do unless they want to do it for a pretty long time.