Except for the slight reshaping from Mother Nature's continual weathering, the granitic giants comprising the City of Rocks have served as unchanging sentinels to centuries of history.
Millions and billions of years in the making, the City of Rocks more recently has been a home or temporary hospice to hundreds of thousands of people. Its past 200 years of known history can be broken easily into a number of diverse chapters - the Shoshone Indians, 19th-century emigrants bound for California and Oregon, stagecoach routes, turn-of-the-century homesteading, mining, ranching and rock climbing, to mention the most prominent few.Modern-day history is currently being written on the City of Rocks, located four miles north of the Utah-Idaho border and two miles west of the Idaho ranching community of Almo. The area has become one of the newest adoptees into the national-park family.
Established by Congress in 1988, the 14,300-acre City of Rocks National Reserve is just months shy of adopting a comprehensive management plan to help protect, preserve and interpret the area.
A unit of the National Park system, the City of Rocks National Reserve is cooperatively managed by the National Park Service and the Idaho Department of Parks and Recreation. About 7,300 acres is publicly owned, with the other 7,000 private.
Those are two of the major differences between a national reserve and national parks and monuments, which are all public land and fall completely under NPS management.
The stoic spires and silent overlooks of the City of Rocks are becoming a site of many controversies and concerns. The reserve is replete with issues, innovative management and historical ironies, and the net result is plenty of varying preferences regarding the management and protective directions to be taken by the reserve.
"You talk to more than one person, you're going to get more than one opinion," said Bill Jones, a rancher in nearby Almo and one of the 16 individuals owning private land in the reserve. "We've been here so long, we're used to having things our own way."
A numbers game
Almo's population of approximately 250 people - comprised primarily of third- and fourth-generation ranching families - is finding itself outnumbered. The annual total of visitors to the City of Rocks has steadily increased over the past five years, topping 100,000 last year.
"Overnight, I'm sure, if we put signs up on I-84, we'd double that number," said reserve supervisor David Pugh from the National Park Service's Twin Falls office.
The numbers are mind-boggling, considering that the NPS has requested that its Idaho parks counterparts not promote the City of Rocks while management and protective efforts were still being planned. In fact, signs directing visitors to the reserve have been kept to state and county roads in about a 25-mile radius of the area.
Yet the people come - some families, some small groups, some historians, some recreationists, but mostly rock climbers. And they arrive from all over the world, be it part of an extensive rock-climbing program at Idaho State University in nearby Pocatello or a small group of Italians who like so many foreign visitors have heard about the rustic atmosphere and top-quality climbing experiences.
"The City of Rocks is famous around the world - everybody knows about it," said one Italian man making his second visit to the reserve. "The rocks, the climbing is fantastic."
And attention is increasing in other ways - Toyota filmed a recent commercial at the City of Rocks, and a mountain bike company used the rocks as a backdrop for a recent print ad. Photos of the City of Rocks have appeared in Time magazine, while a team from Shape magazine was in the reserve earlier this month researching an upcoming feature on outdoor fitness.
"With more and more people coming, you knew that something had to be done," says Jones. "You've got to have some control."
Control vs. commerce
Control seems to be a key word, especially considering the differing opinions and issues involving the City of Rocks - managing the combination of private and public lands in a national-park-type setting; interweaving the varied interests and desires of the ranchers and rock climbers; monitoring the cooperation between the National Park Service and Idaho Department of Parks and Recreation; and understanding the local folks' fears of unchecked commercial and residential development.
The City of Rocks is the fourth national reserve - and the first to combine private and public land under coordinated federal, state and local supervision. The Ice Age National Science Reserve in Wisconsin was the first reserve in 1964, with a pair of reserves added in 1978 - Ebey's Landing in Washington and Pinelands in New Jersey.
Reserve status for City of Rocks culminated more than a half-century of work. In the late 1920s and early '30s, Charles Brown - editor of the Oakley (Idaho) Herald - pushed for the area to become a national monument. That was the goal again in the early 1970s, when a much-larger 30,025-acre site was unsuccessfully proposed for preservation as a national monument.
The City of Rocks earned distinction as a National Historic Landmark in 1966 and then a National Natural Landmark in 1974.
Reserve status came in November 1988 and nearly five years has passed with no formal direction for the City of Rocks. But that direction - in the form of a proposed management plan - is due to be released in mid-October.
Reserve management
In 1991 and 1992, the National Park Service conducted public meetings regarding the development of the City of Rocks National Reserve. Midway through the meetings, four alternatives were proposed, ranging from doing nothing to the rustic area to providing a very protective, restrictive management plan.
Following the public meetings, NPS officials met with Idaho legislators and refined the alternatives into three proposals. The three were then subjected to in-house reviews by the National Park Service and the Idaho Department of Parks and Recreation and other federal, state and local agencies involved with the reserve.
A single alternative was selected, after more work from the involved agencies and local feedback from rock-climbing groups and residents from surrounding communities. "The reserve is set up so local people have input," said Ned Jackson of the Idaho Department of Parks and Recreation, who is the reserve's on-site manager.
Since then, NPS planners and Pacific Region officials have retooled and reviewed the single proposal, said to be the most restrictive and protective alternative. Once the management draft is released, a 60-day public review period will be allowed with a series of three or four public meetings to be conducted.
Continuing with the expected timetable, a final version will be sent to the NPS regional director, who will then sign the formal "decision of record" document sometime in early 1994, Pugh said.
The NPS will subsequently turn management and administration of the reserve over to the Idaho Department of Parks and Recreation; however, it will continue to provide occasional grant funding as well as technical assistance and support. "We will always have an oversight rule in the reserve," said Pugh, "to make sure the state is running a national park program under national park guidelines."
Jackson says quality at the reserve is essential, and the public won't care if supervision comes from a federal or state agency. "They don't care if I'm wearing a brown uniform or a green uniform, just as long as we're providing the services."
Finding the funding
However, the key element will be funding the management plan, which could likely include creating new trails, revising campground plans, posting new signs and possibly constructing a visitors center. Such will far exceed by many times the reserve's current limited annual operating budget, which includes about $90,000 from the NPS, with the Idaho Legislature appropriating an additional $110,000 starting in fiscal 1994.
With federal dollars being tight, Pugh says he sees the need for a cooperative effort between Idaho and Utah's congressional delegations to help earn the necessary federal appropriations.
"The City of Rocks has the potential to become the most popular park area certainly in Idaho and probably in northern Utah," said Pugh. "It has potential to be a great asset to both states."
Climbers vs. ranchers
Another area of concern has been conflicts between the ranchers who own private property in the City of Rocks National Reserve and the rock climbers.
The battle is far from being a mano-a-mano affair, but there are differences in culture and views toward the reserve. Ranchers see the rocks as obstacles hampering grazing and the already difficult cultivation of the land; climbers consider the rocks as objects of challenging recreation and the land as access to those rocks.
"There is such a diversity of backgrounds that people don't understand each other," said Jon Heaton, a longtime Almo resident and state park ranger specializing in natural resources at the reserve.
The issue of private property varies for individual to individual. Some consider "No Trespassing" signs to be just that, while others say they are a warning to close all gates, keep the livestock from getting spooked and otherwise maintain a low profile.
Boundaries between public and private land are often fine lines. Some climbing areas, such as the popular Elephant Rock, include both private and public property. While reserve officials have jurisdiction over the public lands, incidents on private property require that a deputy sheriff be called in from Almo.
"Most of them are pretty conscientious," said Jones of the climbers. "They're a different-looking group than we're used to around here - they look different to us, and I'm sure we look different to them."
Climbers vs. government
While rock climbing in the City of Rocks can be traced back to the 1960s, both the sport and the locale have exploded in popularity since the mid-1980s.
With gear in tow and Dave Bingham's City of Rocks climbing guidebook in hand, climbers from throughout the world have gushed about the serene, scenic setting and smorgasbord of challenging climbs. "It's like a gym outdoors - a lot of short climbs," said Heaton. "With a little gear you can climb anything in the City of Rocks."
Climbers aren't limited so much by the heights as they are by restricted access to the rocks. For example, one of the most popular and difficult rocks, Dolphin Rock, is located on private property. Climbers have unsuccessfully asked park service officials to help with access difficulties by purchasing Dolphin Rock and other popular climbing areas from private landowners. Climbing associations have also tried to make land purchases themselves for increased access.
Many climbers say they want the government to get involved in property access, yet they also voice fears regarding more visitors and increased development that would accompany that involvement. They also debate among themselves about management philosophies regarding the drilling of the rocks for bolts and other climbing devices.
"The City of Rocks has kind of been a rock climbers' exclusive - and I think they'd like to keep it that way," said Heaton. "In reality, I'd hate to see any more people come. You'd hate to see it turn into a Yellowstone or something like that."
Ranchers vs. government
One topic in Almo is how federal and state agencies can coordinate the use of public and private land in the reserve without the government exercising eminent-domain privileges and taking ownership of all private property.
"We just can't," said Pugh, citing congressional limitations. "We, the NPS, cannot, regardless of what is needed from a historical or aesthetic or park point of view."
Instead, the park services will have to work from a prioritized list of property - if one property is private and can't be purchased, then officials will need to target a second-choice property. However, the congressional act creating the reserve allows for a "willing buyer, willing seller" provision - that private lands will be purchased by the NPS should the landowner so desire.
Jackson thinks the private grazing land provides an appropriate setting for the reserve as well as an aesthetic buffer of sorts. "The rustic atmosphere - we want to preserve that," he said.
Since his parents lost ranch property in Arizona with the development of Grand Canyon National Park, Jackson says he can empathize with the local landowners. "I kind of know how the people feel. . . . These are ranching people - friendly and easy to work with. As long as you don't step on their toes, they're very congenial."
The park services also try to cooperate in trading property easements, fixing fences and monitoring potential trespassing problems. "We try to be good neighbors," said Jackson.
Development vs. serenity
Kathleen Durfee, a lifetime Almo resident and interpretive ranger for the Idaho Department of Parks and Recreation, lists all sorts of management and development possibilities for the reserve: increased family and group use, a scenic corridor along the old California Trail, turnouts, hike-along portions, living history presentations, slide presentations. And the interpretive elements are just as varied, with topics including 19th-century trails, geology, homesteading, mining, Native Americans, rock climbing and stage and freight stations.
While she's excited about the development possibilities inside the reserve, she's concerned about how Almo and the surrounding rural Raft River Valley will be affected. She recounts with a hint of disdain about the Park City developer who was looking at the Almo area as a possible resort - "to turn us into a Park City or a McCall area," she said.
"I think a Golden Arches would ruin everything," she added.
Heaton, who has lived in Almo since his teen years, agrees. "You've got a lot of paranoia. They (local residents) don't want the change, the growth, that the reserve will bring. . . .
"This is the true national park-type setting," he added. "It's quiet, there's no crowds, there's a (water) pump, outhouses, no buildings, no vending.
And I hope it stays that way."