Vandals strike iconic landscapes at Utah’s most popular national park, officials say

People have been vandalizing the iconic landscape of Zion National Park more and more recently, park officials said.

Blue spray paint and muddy handprints have splattered sandstone walls, names were carved into logs and alcoves, and canyon walls were scraped up, park officials said.

“Recently there has been an uptick in some visitors wanting to leave their ‘mark’ during their visit. You can help protect Zion National Park by not creating graffiti,” the park said Monday on Facebook. “No one comes to the park expecting to see graffiti but nearly every day, staff find words and shapes carved, drawn, painted (with mud, dirt, pigment, paint), or scratched on rocks and more recently even carved within moss.”

Graffiti and vandalism in the park takes time and money to clean up. The surface could be damaged and often can’t be restored to its original condition, park officials said.

Many of the rocks at Zion National Park are sedimentary rocks whose layers were first deposited between 110 million and 270 million years ago, park officials said.

“Depending on the area damaged and what the surface is, it can take park staff hours to remove using a variety of equipment that has to be carried to the site,” the park said. “Graffiti and other forms of damage to park resources are harmful and illegal.”

It’s been an ongoing problem for Zion National Park officials this year. The park was already one of the most visited national parks in the U.S., and more people have been visiting during the coronavirus pandemic.

Nearly 450,000 people visited the park in July, and almost 4.5 million people visited in 2019, according to park data.

In August, officials found six bright blue boxes painted on sandstone, McClatchy News previously reported.

Other national parks have seen an increase in vandalism and litter as more people are heading outdoors during the pandemic, McClatchy News reported.

This story was originally published December 15, 2020 at 3:04 PM with the headline "Vandals strike iconic landscapes at Utah’s most popular national park, officials say."