Bulletin file photoCrater Lake

In 42 years living next to Smith Rock, Rosemary Tittle has seen the place go from a quietly kept secret to a well-advertised destination.

The crowds have grown in response. On a busy weekend the parking lots at Smith Rock State Park near Terrebonne fill, and visitors start parking wherever they can find a spot near the park.

“There is not enough parking for the people,” said Tittle, 69, “so they are parking on the sides of the road and it is just not safe.”

This year and last, Smith Rock was among seven locations in the state featured in the Seven Wonders of Oregon campaign by Travel Oregon, the state’s tourism commission. The other six wonders are Crater Lake, the Painted Hills, the Columbia River Gorge, the Oregon Coast, Mount Hood and the Wallowas.

While it is hard to gauge the effectiveness of the campaign for regions like the Gorge, Coast or Wallowas, officials at Smith Rock State Park and the Painted Hills, one of the three units of the John Day Fossil Beds National Monument, have visitation numbers showing the campaign has probably been a success.

While regional attractions can spread out more visitors, small parks like Smith Rock cannot. The crowds at Smith Rock have prompted Travel Oregon to change its message for people thinking of visiting the state park, said Linea Gagliano, manager of public affairs and industry for the state agency.

“We want to make sure that people know that the weekdays are the best time for them to visit,” she said.

As part of the Seven Wonders of Oregon campaign this year, Travel Oregon teamed with Portland-based advertising firm Wieden+Kennedy to come up with a bicycle hunt, in which one custom, handmade bicycle will be hidden at each wonder over the summer.

While the bike hunts at the other wonders are on Saturdays, Travel Oregon held the Smith Rock event Friday. Gagliano said it did so to avoid the weekend crowds. Jerad Harris, a 23-year-old Bend man, found the bike early Friday on Smith Rock’s Canyon Trail. The first bike, hidden on June 20 along a mountain bike trail on Mount Hood, was also found quickly. Five bikes and five hunts for them remain.

The hidden bike Friday only caused a minimal increase in the number of visitors at Smith Rock, said Scott Brown, manager at the park.

“I saw probably a good dozen bikers out there when you might (normally) see one or two,” he said.

It is the weekend popularity of the park that keeps pushing visitation numbers up, Brown said. For the first five months of this year Smith Rock has seen a 21.6 percent increase in day-use visitors, going from 266,176 in the same period last year to 323,480, according to data from Oregon State Parks. Camping saw a nearly 23 percent increase in the same time period, going from 7,198 last year to 8,835 this year.

Park workers and volunteers have chatted with visitors to see what prompted their visits and many say the Seven Wonders, Brown said.

“We hear it every day that people are coming because of that campaign,” he said.

Concerned about the parking situation, Al Dertinger, 69, who lives across from Tittle and near the entrance to Smith Rock State Park, wrote a letter late last month to Gagliano, the Travel Oregon official. While a poor ski year may have contributed to the increase of visitors at Smith Rock, he sees the Seven Wonders campaign as the main trigger of the increase.

Living a quarter-mile from the park, Dertinger has had park visitors try to park in his driveway and partially block it. While parking is only supposed to be on the side of the road closest to the park, he said people park on both sides as it becomes more crowded, leading to pedestrians wandering through traffic.

“It gets to a point that there is no place for anyone to walk besides the road,” he said.

Dertinger said the state should build more facilities, parking and bathrooms to accommodate the crowds. He suggested a new lot for 150 cars in a vacant field in the park. Tittle also would like to see more parking. Her husband has gone out and counted cars parked along the roads on a busy weekend and seen as many as 90. She recommended the park add spots for 200 more cars than what is already available, giving room for current and future crowds.

Dertinger said he has yet to receive a response to his letter. Gagliano said Friday she hears his concerns and plans to contact him.

Smith Rock has 400 official parking spots, said Brown, the park manager. While recognizing the parking problem there, he said the state must conduct a study before deciding to build more parking lots and bathrooms. Factors to be weighed include how providing more parking will affect natural resources, trail conditions and maintenance loads.

“It gets to a point that you are degrading the experience by allowing too many people,” he said. A relatively small state park at 651 acres, Smith Rock has only two year-round workers — Brown and a ranger. While they receive help from seasonal workers, interns and volunteers, some times of the year only one person is working at a time at Smith Rock.

While the Painted Hills has seen a dramatic increase in visitors, likely due in large part to the Seven Wonders campaign, parking lots there have not been overwhelmed, said Mike Rubin, chief of facility management at the John Day Fossil Beds.

Last year, visitation at the Painted Hills increased by 49 percent over 2013. The number of visitors last year was about 73,400, about twice as many as the year before.

“I think so far we have been able to absorb it pretty well,” he said.

Likewise, Crater Lake has handled growing numbers of visitors, said Jennifer Evans, administrative assistant at the park. Although she is not sure whether the increase in visitors is because of the Seven Wonders campaign, the park saw a 2 percent increase from 2013 to 2014. Visitation went up by 12,481 visitors, from 523,027 to 535,508.

“Because we have the road all the way around the rim, that helps disperse visitors more than at Smith Rock,” she said.

Through the Seven Wonders campaign, Travel Oregon is trying to increase visitation and support tourism-based jobs around the state, Gagliano said. “By and large this has been our most successful campaign ever,” she said.

But whether the campaign will continue beyond this year has yet to be decided.

“It may be something that we change next year,” she said. “We don’t know at this point. We are figuring out what is the best thing for Oregon and what is the best thing to get visitation here and create more jobs.”

— Reporter: 541-617-7812, ddarling@bendbulletin.com