About 250,000 people visit the canyon yearly, which is less than one-tenth of the crowds at popular parks such as Yellowstone and Great Smoky Mountains. Steele hopes the park will remain relatively undeveloped, and he has no plans to create new campsites or pave the gravel road that winds by the canyon's remote north rim.
"We don't want to upgrade it," he said.
Years of Dissent
Hoover designated 20,766 acres of the canyon as a national monument in 1933. Beginning in the late 1980s, Senator Ben Nighthorse Campbell of Colorado introduced legislation to upgrade the monument to a park and expand its boundaries.
After years of legislative battles, Congress created the 30,000-acre park in 1999—the first new U.S. national park since Joshua Tree and Death Valley in California were designated as national parks in 1994.
Colorado water suits often take years to resolve, and both Steele and Hokit predict the Gunnison River dispute will be no exception. But they hope that a compromise can be found.
"We're approaching this from a very friendly negotiating basis," Hokit said. "The park is important to Montrose."
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