Gorgeous rural town where locals FEAR becoming the next Moab
While many are hailing a possible economic boom for the town of Richfield, residents are also concerned that it could go the way of Moab, a trail tourism city which now welcomes five million visitors each year.
Richfield is located in Sevier County which has boomed since it was declared 'Utah's Trail Country' five years ago in an effort to draw in tourists.
Their decades old off-road and newer mountain bike trails has brought in swamps of visitors in their hotels almost every summer weekend.
But with a population of just 8,000 people, locals are worried that the influx of visitors will change their small town for the worse.
'Selfishly, I don't want to happen here what's been happening in Moab because it's just become crazy,' Richfield native Tyler Jorgensen told The Salt Lake Tribune.
'It's really an amazing territory out here, so the unselfish part [of me] wants to share this with the world,' he continued. 'Let's keep it intimate. Keep it small. Let's not get crazy.'
Moab endured a surge of tourists seeking its famous Slickrock Bike Trail and plenty of offerings for adventure enthusiasts, as well as views of its canyons and red rock formations.
The boom has sent house prices soaring to make Moab one of the most expensive places to buy a home in the state. The median listing price for a home in the city was $584,500 in June, per the Utah Association of Realtors.
One family man, who grew up in Moab, said that the overcrowding and a lack of affordability eventually drew him to Richfield.
'I was in Moab for a long time, and I always thought, "Man, when I retire, it's gonna be Moab,"' 37-year-old Tyson Curtis told the outlet.
'Now there's just no way I could ever afford to live there. And it's not even the same city as it was when I went to school there and graduated and moved back there for a couple years.'
Curtis said, however, that when you leave Moab, it feels like travelling back in time.
'You come to a spot like this, you're like, "This is Moab again." With the Paiute Trail, with 2,000 miles, there will always be a spot that you'll still have this solitude and this privacy in nature.'
But for Richfield, its proximity to biking trails threaten locals with a future similar to Moab's overcrowded and expensive lifestyle.
House prices rose by almost 40 percent in the year to June 2024 to a median listing price of $400,000, per Redfin.
Carson DeMille and his friends first constructed a mountain biking trail network as a way to bring business into the town, but primarily to entertain themselves.
'We just built what we liked, what we wanted,' DeMille said. 'It was a selfish endeavor. I guess it just worked out.'
Utah is already renowned for the fastest-growing youth mountain bike league in the country, the Tribune reported.
Richfield has already had a taste of what it could be like if the city was overrun by tourists.
DeMille and a group of volunteers built the course 20 miles east of Richfield, dubbed the Glenwood Hills course, which held its first National Interscholastic Cycling Association race in 2018.
The event was a 'pretty eye-opening experience' for DeMille, the city and the county after more than a thousand school-age racers arrived and families took over local restaurants and hotels.
'We kind of had to start out with volunteer efforts to showcase what the possibilities were,' DeMille continued.
'And then from there, the city and the county were great partners. We didn't have to try very hard to convince them to put some investment into it.'
By 2021, state and local backing poured $800,000 into a 38-mile cross-country network of trails.
One was even named as one of the five best mountain biking trails in Utah, known as the Spinal Tap which consists of three parts and span 18 miles long.
Its reputation has continued to attract more riders, reaching around 150 per day - three times the amount it used to attract per week.
Every year, the course hosts one or two NICA races as well as others, such as the Intermountain Cup cross-country circuit which brings around 500 to 700 bikers and their families, the circuits business developer Chris Spragg told the Tribune.
The trails popularity has been reflected within the small town's growing hotel revenue, which increased by 31.5% from 2019 to 2023.
'I do really think that, as they develop this,' biker Dave Gilbert told the outlet. 'It's going to drive more of the economy here.'
Yet, this is exactly the fears of those who have witnessed the boom in Moab.
'That's probably one of the most vocal concerns of people's, is we're opening Pandora's box to crazy growth and issues like Moab has,' DeMille said.
'I'd be naïve to say there probably aren't going to be some growing pains. There have been some growing pains with more people.'
However, DeMille points out some natural character differences between Richfield and Moab that may save their small town from changing too much.
'Moab has two national parks, the Colorado River. They have mountains of slick rock. They have Jeeping. They have thousands of miles of mountain biking trails,' he said.
'And maybe, you know, we could try our darndest and never become Moab if we wanted to .'
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