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Every year hundreds of thousands of tourists visit Zion Canyon National Park.  Over the course of the past few years it has become one of the most popular open spaces to visit in the world, which is interesting considering that only a few years ago there was serious discussion about removing the funding of national parks due to the fact that they were not showing the kinds of tourism numbers that would support the funding allocations.  Quite simply, national parks in the United States were suffering, due to the fact that there is a large amount of money necessary for their upkeep and staffing and not enough people were visiting them to justify spending these large amounts of money.  Those who argued against federal funding of national parks wanted to see the land turned over to the individual states in which the parks were located, which would almost assure that the land would then be sold off to developers due to the fact that the states also did not have the money in their budgets to cover maintenance costs.  In an effort to boost interest in national parks, a large scale advertising campaign was launched that would illustrate the beauty of each individual park, at the same time showing the neighboring parks.  This campaign primarily advertised the parks located in the southwest, which are all within a short driving distance of one another.  One of the main issues that was depressing visitation rates was the fact that the parks are difficult to get to, and ultimately are going to involve driving at least a few hours from the nearest major city.  In the southwest, the cities of choice for beginning national parks trips are generally Las Vegas and Salt Lake City, either one providing the ability to fly in and