In the months before the Navajo Generating Station closed, many observers prognosticated economic doom for nearby Page, Arizona, population 7,500 or so. The plant employed 463 full-time, high-wage workers, contributed about $51 million a year to Page’s economy and paid the school district some $2.7 million in property taxes.
In December 2019, the plant burned its last coal and shut down, threatening to erase Page as quickly as the town had been founded to house Glen Canyon Dam’s builders in the 1950s. Some people left to find new jobs, and school enrollment declined. The population dipped slightly for a while, and per capita income fell.
881,000
The number of new hikers in 2022. Hiking is the nation’s most popular outdoor activity, with running, bicycling, fishing and camping rounding out the top five.
22.9%
Amount that participation in road, mountain and BMX bicycling grew in 2022.
21%, 12%, 8.5%
Participation growth rates in 2022 for snowshoeing, camping and cross-country skiing, respectively.
Yet Page is not only still economically viable; by some measures, it is thriving. Overall, sales tax collection has remained steady, and in some sectors has increased. Employment rebounded post-COVID, new restaurants and hotels opened, and median home prices are nearly twice what they were in 2018. A modular home manufacturer sprouted on the old power plant site, and a $700 million resort is planned for Navajo Nation lands just outside town.
Page’s survival can be credited partly to its location near spectacular public lands, national monuments, parks and Lake Powell and Glen Canyon National Recreation Area. Like many gateway communities, Page has managed to leverage its natural amenities to buoy its economy, even when the old extractive industries dried up and scurried away.
In 2024, more than 4.6 million people visited Glen Canyon, for example, spending an estimated $540 million locally. Together, the National Park Service and Aramark, the recreation area’s main concessionaire, employed some 1,300 people — about 17% of the population. The city-owned parking lot at Horseshoe Bend in Glen Canyon generated nearly $20.5 million since it opened in 2019, clocking more than 770,000 visitors last year.
Amenities economies don’t offer the same perks as extractive industries — many jobs are seasonal and relatively low-paying, without pensions, unions or other benefits, and they can spawn housing shortages, overcrowding and gentrification. Nevertheless, they’re a force to be reckoned with, as places like Moab, Bend, Durango, Sedona, Springdale and Jackson demonstrate.
SOURCES: National Park Service, City of Page, Page Unified School District, Bureau of Economic Analysis, Headwaters Economics, Outdoor Industry Association.
Data visualization by Hannah Agosta & Marissa Garcia/High Country News
This article appeared in the March 2025 print edition of the magazine with the headline “The rise of the recreation economy.”
