Officials Turn Away Visitors to Zion Park : Closure: Disappointed tourists are told most trails will remain closed until canyon road can be rebuilt. Employees also find they are out of work.

Jean Young squinted and smiled at the red canyon walls just beyond her reach. She recalled a place so beautiful that she has dreamed of coming back for 30 years. “My husband and I used to say it should be one of the Seven Wonders of the World,” Young said.

But Friday morning, tantalizingly close to the place she remembered, Young was cut off. A landslide two days earlier had completely blocked the canyon, forcing the National Park Service to close the centerpiece of one of its most popular attractions for an undetermined period of time.

“For all these years, I’ve wanted to come back,” said Young, who might have spoken for the hundreds of others turned back by rangers.

Young and her daughter were among those regrouping at the park’s visitor center, trying to salve their disappointment with thoughts of Grand Canyon vistas or Las Vegas jackpots not far down the road. “What else can we do?” concluded Young, of Scottsdale, Ariz. “Let’s gamble!”

Park service officials said they have no idea how long it will take to patch the road up Zion Canyon, the only way in to some of the Utah park’s most spectacular scenery. However, some locals said they were told it would take up to two months. The winding, two-lane road was pounded by a 150-yard-wide slide Wednesday night and then was washed away when the Virgin River formed a lake and spilled over its banks.

More than 300 guests and 130 employees of the Zion Lodge were marooned for almost 24 hours, unable to get out until a one-lane dirt road was fashioned beside the river late Thursday. By Friday morning, the last employees and about 40 trail horses were led to safety. But one spring season and many jobs had been blown to dust.

“We’re closing everything. Shutting down. Don’t know when we’ll be back,” said general manager Gordon Taylor of the landmark lodge, made of the same red stone that forms the canyon. “For some of our people it’s going to be a real hardship.”

Zion is described by park rangers as a religious term meaning “place of tranquillity” and, indeed, it is a place of biblical beauty. The Virgin River carves the bottom of a canyon whose sheer sandstone walls are as red as a setting sun, rising vertically 3,000 feet into the air. The gorge is so narrow, just a few hundred yards in sections, that hikers say they feel a sense of intimacy, as well as awe.

“Friends of ours had said we must see it,” said Gerardus Van Westing, one of four Dutch travelers turned away Friday. “What a pity! But maybe someday we will come again.”

Even from across the country, the acolytes of Zion felt the loss of their favorite spot, which rangers say inspires a fierce following. One octogenarian phoned from St. Louis on Friday to say she remembered vividly a visit there--in the 1920s.

Most of the park’s most popular trail heads are temporarily inaccessible, although access to some may be available before repairs to the road are complete. Inside the crowded visitors center, rangers urged the displaced not to despair, that Zion still had other attractions, such as Checkerboard Mesa and the Watchman.

Ranger Todd Cullings changed his morning lecture to suggest that even the landslide was a learning experience. After all, such movement helped carve the canyon. “One of the beautiful things about the park is geology in action. We apologize for the inconvenience. But hey, that’s gravity!”

Visitors weren’t the only ones adjusting their plans. More than two dozen young employees of the lodge were suddenly out of work, with no friends or family to take them in. The group--clad grunge-style in jeans, flannel shirts and bandannas--caravaned to a market just outside the park entrance and discussed what to do with $100 or less in severance pay apiece.

Soon, the young cooks, maids and busboys--who had worked for room and board and about $100 a week--formed a pact. They agreed to set out for Lake Powell in Arizona, where they hoped to camp and scrounge out a living until the lodge reopens.

Meanwhile, they struck a wild bunch pose beside their battered car, cranked “Suzy Q” on a boombox and held up signs: “Displaced Park Employees. Donations Accepted” and “Will Accept Beer!”

“At first, it was really fun when we were trapped up there,” said Sheri Huffsteter. “Then all the power and lights went out and it got really scary. And in just a few hours we learned we were all losing our jobs.

“All we’ve got now is each other,” she concluded, “so we’ll stick together.”