Grand County archery range gets $80,000 grant boost

A long-planned archery range at Old Spanish Trail Arena got the money it needed to push past the finish line. Grand County received an $80,000 state grant on June 10, and officials said the award should cover the remaining infrastructure and construction costs at the 1.38-acre site just south of Moab.

The grant came through the Utah Division of Outdoor Recreation’s Outdoor Recreation Grant program, which is designed to help communities build new outdoor recreation infrastructure that supports tourism, local economic development and quality of life. For Grand County, the new funding is aimed at the practical pieces that turn a dirt lot into a usable range: fencing, gravel, signage and a shade structure.

County Commissioner Trish Hedin and Old Spanish Trail Arena Director Angie Book have been working on the project for years. The range has been in development for more than a decade, with the county leaning on donated labor, materials, equipment, cash and in-kind help from local contractors and agencies to keep it moving. A prior $36,000 state grant helped get the project this far, but fencing remained the biggest obstacle.

Hedin said the new grant should let the work move faster than volunteer labor alone could manage, and she expressed hope that the range could be finished by the end of the year. The planned facility would include six target stations set at distances from 10 to 60 yards, along with a keypad-controlled entry system, picnic tables and a shade shelter.

The Grand County Commission backed the effort in February, unanimously approving a $5,000 local cash match from the commission’s discretionary fund for the grant application. By then, county officials had already been treating Old Spanish Trail Arena as more than an equestrian facility. The arena sits at 3641 S. Highway 191 in Moab, minutes south of downtown, and a 2021 county request to use the property for recreational purposes showed the site had long been viewed as a public asset.

A late-2025 public notice had said range work was temporarily paused pending additional dirt work, underscoring how much site preparation still had to be done. Once complete, the range would add a dedicated place for target practice and hunting preparation to a county known more for trails, river corridors and motorsports. It would also extend the arena’s broader transformation into a recreation hub, with future pickleball courts, an archery range and a recreation sports complex all part of the long view.