MOE'S
VALLEY
How do you protect a place everyone wants a piece of?
At the edge of St. George, UT, Moe’s Valley brings together world-class bouldering, beloved trails, and fragile desert habitat. It also brings competing ideas about what land is worth: revenue for public schools, room for a growing city, a place to find community, and a home for species whose survival depends on it. Protecting Moe’s means confronting a bigger question: how do we value a landscape whose greatest contribution may be leaving it intact?
Protecting Moe’s Valley shouldn’t mean sacrificing somewhere else
Some places are worth more than what we can build on them
Moe’s Valley is caught in a conservation bargain. Protections for the surrounding Zone 6 landscape are tied to the Northern Corridor Highway, a proposed road through the Red Cliffs National Conservation Area. If that deal unravels, protections here could unravel with it. People working to save Moe’s are navigating competing conservation values, with consequences on both sides. We need a path toward lasting protection that doesn’t pit one irreplaceable landscape against another.
The value of Moe’s Valley reaches far beyond its property lines. It lives in days spent among the boulders, trails that connect people to the desert, and habitat for Mojave desert tortoises and endangered dwarf bear poppies. Yet much of this landscape sits on state trust land managed to generate revenue, primarily for public schools. Lasting protection means making the case for everything this place contributes—and finding a solution that recognizes its value as open space.
Help make the case for keeping Moe’s wild
When decision-makers weigh conservation against development, the economic benefits of keeping land open deserve to be counted. Stewardship Utah and local climbing advocates are working with Utah State University’s Institute of Outdoor Recreation and Tourism to study recreation at Moe’s Valley and its economic impact. The research is intended to document visitation, visitor spending, and the long-term benefits of preserving this landscape.
Taking the survey helps researchers understand how people use Moe’s and what those visits contribute to surrounding communities. Your answers can strengthen the evidence advocates bring to conversations about its future. No survey can guarantee protection, but your participation can help make the value of keeping Moe’s intact harder to overlook.
Holding Ground:
a short film by Tessa White
Filmmaker Tessa White explores the complicated fight to protect Moe’s Valley in a new short film featuring our own Public Lands Policy Associate Alma Baste. The film examines what’s at stake for this beloved desert landscape and the difficult choices facing those working to preserve it.