Chip-sealing begins on Hole-in-the-Rock Road amid lawsuit fight

The first 10 miles of Hole-in-the-Rock Road are getting a chip-seal surface, and that changes the drive for everyone who uses one of southern Utah’s most important backcountry access routes. The work will cut dust and loose gravel, but it also marks a real shift in what day-trippers, overlanders and rental-car visitors can expect as they head toward the Escalante country.

Garfield County began the project inside Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument on May 19, even as the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance pushed its lawsuit over the road work in federal court. County public works director Dave Dodds said the road has been seeing about 600 vehicles a day during busy periods, with some weekends approaching 1,500 vehicle passes a day. He said the county was spending about $150,000 a year grading the route, only to watch washboards and potholes return within a day or two in the dry months.

That traffic mix is part of the county’s argument for the change. Dodds has said the road now sees minivans, Priuses, Ford Mustangs and rental cars that were never built for a rough desert track. For travelers, the practical effect is straightforward: the front end of Hole-in-the-Rock Road should be easier on tires and less punishing on suspension, but the route may also feel less like a slow, gritty desert crawl and more like a road that invites heavier use.

The road remains a major corridor to Spooky and Peek-A-Boo slot canyons, Devil’s Garden and Coyote Gulch. The National Park Service says Hole-in-the-Rock Road runs 62 miles one way from Escalante to the Hole-in-the-Rock landing area, with most of it inside Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument and the last roughly 5 miles in Glen Canyon National Recreation Area. SUWA says 57 of those 62 miles are within the monument and 16 miles are in Garfield County, a reminder of why the fight over maintenance has become a fight over authority, land management and the future of the route itself.

SUWA filed its federal lawsuit and emergency injunction request in February 2026, saying Garfield County needed federal consultation before improvements such as chip sealing. The group said a judge denied its temporary restraining order, then filed another emergency motion as the county moved ahead. The dispute sits on top of a broader jurisdiction battle that has already reshaped the conversation: in July 2025, a federal judge ruled that Utah and two southern Utah counties have jurisdiction over two scenic roads in the area. Garfield County also has leaned into that conflict before, posting a large warning sign at the Highway 12 junction in 2024 telling travelers to use the road at their own risk.

Hole-in-the-Rock Road has always carried a hard-earned reputation. The route follows the general path of the 1879 expedition that brought about 250 men, women and children, along with 83 wagons and more than 1,000 head of livestock, into the canyon country. That history still matters, but so does the trip today. The road is now more than a dusty challenge to solve; it is becoming a different kind of access, one that may be easier to drive and harder to define.