Small businesses at the gateways to America’s national parks face 4 big risks – including changing boundaries and extreme weather

Gateway towns near national parks, which helped generate $56 billion in visitor spending in 2024 and support 340,100 jobs, face four compounding risks: shifting monument boundaries, unpredictable park access policies, extreme weather, and unaffordable local housing for workers.

In July 2026 the Trump administration shrank Utah's Grand Staircase-Escalante and Bears Ears monuments by about 90%, reversing earlier expansions, under Antiquities Act authority that legal experts dispute. Meanwhile parks like Yosemite and Arches have repeatedly reinstated and scrapped reservation systems with little warning, and wildfire and drought have shut down parks like Black Canyon of the Gunnison entirely.

Small outfitters, guides, and inns — often thin-margin operations already facing high fixed permitting and insurance costs — are left absorbing the fallout, from canceled bookings to lost seasons, with little say in the federal decisions driving it.

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