The fight over paving Hole-in-the-Rock Road

The short version

The first ten miles of Hole-in-the-Rock Road, the stretch that leaves Highway 12 just east of town, were chip-sealed by Garfield County in the spring of 2026. Where there used to be graded dirt, there is now a hard surface. Whether the county had the right to do that is an open question in federal court.

This page explains the fight as of early June 2026: who sued whom, what each side argues in its own words, and what is actually settled. It takes no position on who is right, and it is not a conditions report. For what the road is like on the day you drive it, use the official sources on the road-conditions page.

What you'll notice from the driver's seat

The change is obvious within the first minute. Ten miles of chip-seal ride smooth and fast where the old road rattled, and a passenger car covers that stretch without thinking about it. At about mile ten the hard surface ends and the road becomes what it has always been: graded dirt to the Devil's Garden turnoff, worsening washboard beyond, and a genuinely rough, sandy, four-wheel-drive finish past mile forty-five.

One caution that locals will recognize. A paved start changes the feel of commitment, not the character of the deep road. The first ten minutes now set an expectation that mile thirty will not honor. Plan the far end of the road exactly the way you did before the asphalt.

The road under the argument

The road follows the route of the 1879–80 Hole-in-the-Rock expedition, in which Latter-day Saint pioneers bound for the San Juan country cut a wagon road southeast from Escalante and finished it with a blasted, chiseled descent through a notch in the rim above the Colorado River. The notch is the hole in the rock. The road that grew along their route now runs about sixty-two miles from Highway 12 to the cliffs above the river.

That geography is why the fight is complicated. Fifty-seven of those sixty-two miles sit inside Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument, with the remainder in Glen Canyon National Recreation Area, and sixteen miles fall within Garfield County. A county road that spends nearly its whole length on federally managed monument land was always going to raise the question of who decides what the road becomes.

A 150-year-old law and a fifteen-year case

The legal vehicle is a statute most visitors have never heard of. RS 2477, passed in 1866, granted rights-of-way across federal land for highways established by public use. Congress repealed it in 1976 but preserved rights that already existed. Ever since, counties across the West have argued that historic routes crossing federal land are county highways under the old grant, and land agencies and conservation groups have argued over which routes qualify and what the right-of-way allows.

Utah turned that argument into litigation at scale. Kane County sued over fifteen roads in 2008, and in 2012 the State of Utah and its counties filed more than twenty lawsuits claiming roughly twelve thousand routes totaling about thirty-six thousand miles. The Hole-in-the-Rock thread of that fight ran for around fifteen years in front of U.S. District Judge Clark Waddoups, who eventually held a bench trial on fifteen "bellwether" roads in Kane and Garfield counties, chosen as a fair sample of the larger universe of claims.

On July 23, 2025, Judge Waddoups issued the first ruling from that trial. In a short, partial summary judgment, he found that Hole-in-the-Rock Road and Kane County's House Rock Valley Road meet the definition of highways under RS 2477 and quieted title to the state and the counties. The Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance, which holds partial intervenor status in the case, did not get the outcome it wanted on those two roads.

Two qualifications in that ruling matter for everything that followed. First, it covered only two of the fifteen bellwether roads, and the judge cautioned that it was not indicative of how the court would rule on the remaining claims. Second, the decision expressly reserved the question of scope: what the title-holder may actually do with the road. Who owns the right-of-way was answered. What the owner may build on it was not. The 2026 fight lives entirely inside that reserved question.

Five weeks in early 2026

On January 27, 2026, Garfield County Public Works Director David Dodds sent a letter to the monument's manager, Adé Nelson, saying the county intended to begin maintenance activities on the road. The county did not ask for BLM approval. The Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance sent a response letter on February 3 objecting to the plan, and within days county equipment was on the road: grading, culvert installation, and a double chip-seal treatment over roughly ten miles, the stretch closest to Highway 12.

On February 5, SUWA filed a federal lawsuit, Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance v. Garfield County, in the U.S. District Court for the District of Utah, case number 2:26-cv-00096, naming both the county and the Bureau of Land Management. The complaint argues that chip-sealing a dirt road is an improvement rather than maintenance, that Tenth Circuit precedent from the Burr Trail cases requires a right-of-way holder to consult with the BLM before making improvements on federal land, and that the work went forward without the environmental analysis and public involvement that federal law requires.

Nearly the whole dispute compresses into those two words. The county calls the work maintenance of a county highway it holds title to. SUWA calls it an unauthorized improvement that changes the character of a road inside a national monument. The court has not yet said which word the law sees.

What the county says

Garfield County's position starts from the 2025 ruling. After the decision, County Commissioner Leland Pollock told the Deseret News: "We will finally be able to upgrade the road. We have title to the road." In the county's framing, the quiet-title win means Hole-in-the-Rock Road is a county highway that it may manage like its other roads, and the January letter described the chip-seal work as maintenance activities, the routine upkeep a road authority performs: grading, drainage, surface treatment.

What SUWA says

SUWA's position starts from the land under the road. In its telling, the county won title to a right-of-way, which is an easement across land that remains federal public land; it did not win ownership of the road surface or the ground beneath it. From that, SUWA argues the county must consult with the BLM before making improvements, a category it says includes widening, realigning, installing new culverts, and chip-sealing the surface.

When the work began, SUWA staff attorney Hanna Larsen said the project went ahead without analyzing "its environmental impacts to Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument or providing an opportunity to involve the public, as required by law." As the county pushed to finish the stretch while emergency motions were pending, she added: "By racing ahead, the county is attempting to evade judicial review before the court acts on our request for an injunction."

Where it stands, June 2026

The emergency phase went the county's way. According to SUWA's own account, the BLM completed a consultation on the chip-sealing and authorized the county to proceed. SUWA asked the court for a temporary restraining order, which a federal judge denied in mid-May. It then filed a renewed motion for an emergency injunction to pause the work, and the court denied that too. Within days, the county finished laying the chip-seal on the first ten miles.

Those rulings decided only whether the work could continue while the case proceeds. They did not decide who is right. The merits of SUWA's lawsuit are still pending in federal court, and SUWA has said it expects to prevail there. On the older quiet-title front, conservation groups have said they stand ready to appeal once the bellwether rulings become final, and Judge Waddoups still has thirteen bellwether roads and the reserved scope question in front of him.

There are things this page cannot tell you because no reliable source has said them. The cost of the project has not been published; reporting indicates the ten-mile extent was set by available funding. Whether the county intends to seal more miles is unknown. And nobody knows when the scope ruling will come, or whether it could reach back to a stretch of road that is already sealed.

Common questions

Is Hole-in-the-Rock Road paved now? The first ten miles from Highway 12 are, as of spring 2026 — a double chip seal, which is liquid asphalt with crushed rock pressed into it, laid twice. Everything past mile ten is still dirt, washboard, and sand, the way it has been for decades.

Do you still need high clearance or four-wheel drive? That depends on how far down the road the day goes. The chip-seal stretch drives like any paved road, and the National Park Service describes the graded section to the Devil's Garden turnoff as passenger-car friendly in dry weather. The same NPS guidance recommends high-clearance vehicles for the long middle and four-wheel drive past mile forty-five. Check official sources for conditions on the day you drive.

Will the county pave more of the road? Nobody has said. Reporting indicates the ten-mile extent was set by available funding, and no source has confirmed plans for additional miles. The pending court case may also shape what happens next.

Is the paving legal? That is the live question in SUWA v. Garfield County. The county says yes, pointing to its quieted title. SUWA says the county needed federal consultation and environmental review first. The court declined to stop the work while the case proceeds, but it has not ruled on who is right.

What this means for your visit

The courtroom fight is about process and authority. The asphalt is on the ground either way, and the road past mile ten is the same committing backway it has always been. Plan it the way locals do: check the official sources and current conditions before leaving pavement, carry more water and fuel margin than the map suggests, and treat the end of the chip-seal as the start of the real decision rather than the end of it.

Town is the basecamp for all of it. Top off fuel on Main Street, pick up supplies and trail context at the outfitter, and ask at the visitor center when the day's plan depends on the deep road. If the courts change something about Hole-in-the-Rock Road, the date on this page will move with it.