350 Attend No Kings Rally in Moab Alongside Easter Jeep Safari

The drummer was heard first from Sun Court, saxophone joining a few bars later. By 10 a.m. on March 28, as lifted rigs and loaded Wranglers already clogged Center and Main streets for the 60th Easter Jeep Safari, roughly 350 residents and visitors had gathered next to Star Hall to launch the Moab edition of the nationwide No Kings Day 3.0 protests.

The timing was not accidental, and neither was the route. Moab Indivisible, the local organizing group, made a deliberate tactical shift from previous demonstrations: instead of staging from Swanny Park and crossing Main Street en masse, they launched from Sun Court on Center Street and marched just a couple of blocks south to Main, threading the crowd through a downtown grid already carrying Safari weekend traffic. Organizers acknowledged before the march that they were "a little worried" about turnout, given that locals routinely flee Moab on Safari weekend to escape the visitor crush. By the time the march was moving, they said they were "pleasantly surprised."

The Easter Jeep Safari, celebrating its 60th anniversary across a nine-day run from March 28 through April 5, is expected to bring up to 20,000 visitors into the Moab area. That is roughly 57 visitors for every marcher who showed up Saturday. The two crowds largely coexisted: car and truck horns sounded in rolling waves of support throughout the march, and at least one passing motorist offered a pro-Trump counter-statement from a vehicle window. There were no counterprotesters on foot and Moab Police reported no incidents. Sgt. David Bowles was photographed shaking hands with rally attendees as the march moved through downtown, one of the more striking images from a morning when the town was managing two very different definitions of a big Saturday.

The community resource fair that ran alongside the rally set this demonstration apart from a straight political march. Moab Indivisible set up stations offering food, information about local services, and volunteer sign-up opportunities, a model that frames civic participation as community infrastructure rather than spectacle. Alongside the musicians and attendees in inflatable frog and axolotl costumes, the fair gave the event a block-party texture on streets that were otherwise dominated by grille badges and trail rigs.

Moab was among several Utah communities hosting rallies on March 28 as part of the No Kings coordination; Salt Lake City and other towns reported larger turnouts. But Moab's version carried a logistical wrinkle no other Utah city could match: negotiating downtown access simultaneously with the Red Rock 4-Wheelers' permitted, BLM-authorized event bringing in tens of thousands of four-wheel-drive enthusiasts across nine days of guided trail runs.

Easter Jeep Safari continues through Easter Sunday, April 5, with trail ride departures from Spanish Trail Arena seven miles south of town. The protest is over; the Safari is barely started.