The Salt Lake Tribune reports the new Zion National Park Discovery Center is being built about two miles outside the park’s east entrance, where there are fewer visitors.
The hope is that the new center will ease the bottleneck of visitors in the main Zion Canyon and create new opportunities for people to connect with the eastside’s land, culture and local communities.
Superintendent Jeff Bradybaugh said the park leadership saw a need to better connect visitors with the park’s east side more than two decades ago.
At the time, about 2 million people visited the park annually. Now more than 5 million do.
More than a decade ago, park leaders formed a partnership with state and county governments, private landowners, nonprofits and the Kaibab Band of Paiutes to form the Zion Mountain Local Services District, which drove the project.
The center will include 35 miles of mountain biking trails, with 10 more miles of trail set to come on line in the spring, including an adaptive trail for those who use adaptive equipment.
It will also feature interpretive education programs developed with the local band of Paiutes, whose traditional homelands were in the Zion area.