Brief by Central Staff
Tourism – December 2002 – Colorado Central Magazine
We often hear that tourism was off last summer, and now we’ve got confirmation from some official U.S. government statistics.
As of the end of October, only 227,648 visitors had entered Great Sand Dunes National Monument. For the same period in 2001, there were 269,634 admissions.
That’s a decline of about 16% from 2001; the visitor count this year is about 21% below the 10-year average, according to Carol Sperling, who’s in charge of visitor services at the Dunes.
The combination of fire danger, drought, and recession apparently discouraged tourists, but they returned with the rain.
This October was only 1% below October of last year in visitors, Sperling said, noting that “lovely weather early in the month may have contributed to a more normal visitation pattern.”
Other welcome news in October: for a change, precipitation was above normal. An average October brings 0.86 inches; this year brought 1.03 inches. September was also slightly wetter than usual, and was the first month since February to reach average or better.
But this year will not go down as the driest in Sand Dunes history. That record is held by 1951, when only 5.85 inches fell all year. Total precipitation from January 1 through the end of October of 2002 was 10.14 inches, and that was before the big storm of November 8-10.
