{"id":139546,"date":"2026-07-17T05:00:00","date_gmt":"2026-07-17T11:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.durangoherald.com\/tj\/southwest-colorado-tourism-down-as-drought-and-fire-deter-visitors\/"},"modified":"2026-07-17T05:00:00","modified_gmt":"2026-07-17T11:00:00","slug":"southwest-colorado-tourism-down-as-drought-and-fire-deter-visitors","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.durangoherald.com\/tj\/southwest-colorado-tourism-down-as-drought-and-fire-deter-visitors\/","title":{"rendered":"Southwest Colorado tourism down as drought and fire deter visitors"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Mesa
Mesa Verde Country Executive Director Brian Bartlett said the Colorado Welcome Center in Cortez has seen an influx in tourists asking questions about drought and fire in the region. (Journal file)<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>\n

Halfway through the summer tourism season, Southwest Colorado\u2019s economic and tourism officials are seeing visitors turn away from the region due to concerns about the ongoing drought and fires.<\/p>\n

Mesa Verde Country manages tourism in Cortez and Montezuma County. Executive Director Brian Bartlett said it has noticed a weekly decline of 1% to 2% in typical visitation numbers since Memorial Day.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s everything from heads and beds to visitations at restaurants, to visitors participating in our cultural experiences,\u201d Bartlett said.<\/p>\n

He added that the region is down nearly 10% in visitation and visitor spending from historic numbers. The Colorado Welcome Center in Cortez has seen an increase in tourists coming to ask questions and express concerns about the drought, which is extreme in Montezuma County.<\/p>\n

The 65,000-acre Ferris Fire burning northwest of Dolores near Dove Creek has also deterred tourists and inspired cancellations of trips.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s affected a ton of things because we have long term vacation planning that goes on for the Dolores area. People don\u2019t just pop in on a whim,\u201d Bartlett said. \u201cThey don\u2019t want to get in the way of the fire professionals and they don\u2019t want to add extra stress to a community that\u2019s already stressed out.\u201d<\/p>\n

The fire shut down Bradfield Campground, which contains 22 campsites and provides access to fishing, rafting and swimming activities. Tens of thousands of acres of surrounding national forest and Bureau of Land Management land have been burned.<\/p>\n

\u201cPeople don\u2019t want to come back to a burn scar and camp there in following years,\u201d Bartlett said.<\/p>\n

He also said the 100,000-acre Babylon Fire in Utah\u2019s San Juan County near Monticello is interfering with the typical routes roadtrippers take to discover Cortez and its surrounding areas.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s a big pipeline for us from Monticello, Moab, here. We work both ways up and down the Trail of the Ancients scenic byway,\u201d he said. \u201cThere\u2019s fire activity at multiple points along that trail so that\u2019s not helping us.\u201d<\/p>\n

Shak Powers, deputy director of Region 9 Economic Development, said a key measure of fire impact on tourism and businesses will be Dove Creek\u2019s July sales tax numbers, which won\u2019t be available until August. However, it\u2019s not necessarily just the drought and fires responsible for tourism decreases \u2013 it\u2019s also the messaging.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe real takeaway from the last couple of droughts was that the messaging had more impact than the lack of water,\u201d Powers said.<\/p>\n

He said this messaging includes \u201cpeople panicking on social media, making things look worse than they are\u201d and \u201cthe media dramatizing the fire.\u201d<\/p>\n

Bartlett concurred, noting that people can conflate \u201cDolores County\u201d where the Ferris Fire is with \u201cDolores,\u201d unnecessarily steering clear of the town around 15 miles away from the blaze, perceiving it to be on fire.<\/p>\n

Beyond the fire conditions, high gas prices \u2013 which average $4.29 per gallon in Montezuma County, according to Triple A \u2013 are also hurting RV campgrounds, a popular lodging choice for road trippers.<\/p>\n

\u201cA lot of our RVers are still making those trips but they\u2019re staying in one campground for three or four weeks, whereas previously they would stay two or three nights and go to lots of campgrounds,\u201d Bartlett said.<\/p>\n

Campgrounds offer discounted prices for longer stays, he said, but their business models rely on more frequent and shorter stays.<\/p>\n

Bartlett expressed concern for all businesses that rely on tourism, saying restaurants are some of the hardest hit by reduced visitation.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey have a certain number of covers that they have to do each day for their business model to work,\u201d Bartlett said.<\/p>\n

Tourism, he emphasized, is vital to the region\u2019s economy which has lost a lot of oil and gas production and is seeing agriculture hit hard by drought. He encouraged people to consider a trip to Southwest Colorado and to check conditions before they arrive. While tourism is down, he said, it might actually be the best time to visit.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a great time to come to visit the (Mesa Verde) National Park. The visitation is down, the crowds are down. You\u2019ll get more of a one-on-one experience,\u201d Bartlett said. \u201cThe interpretive guides are hungry for people to interpret for. So you\u2019ll get a real deep dive.\u201d<\/p>\n

avanderveen@the-journal.com<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Officials worry about the economy, health of businesses long term<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":139547,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5736,5735],"tags":[402,11,28,60,29,6419,1187,1469],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-139546","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-local-news","category-news","tag-drought","tag-economy-general","tag-headlines","tag-montezuma-county","tag-newsletter","tag-tj-trueanthem","tag-tourism","tag-travel-and-commuting"],"acf":[],"author_name":"Website Administrator","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/139546","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=139546"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/139546\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/139547"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=139546"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=139546"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=139546"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=139546"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}