Is Arizona's Horseshoe Bend too popular for its own good?

In simpler times (before social media), Horseshoe Bend was a quiet yet spectacular stop along a lonely stretch of highway in northern Arizona. Visitors would wander in from U.S. 89, just south of Page, Arizona, either because they’d heard of the dramatic bend in the Colorado River from locals, or noticed the small sign pointing the way and reacted quickly enough to make the sharp turn. They would take a sandy path to an overlook where the land dropped away steeply to reveal a canvas only nature could paint — an emerald river hundreds of feet below, tracing a graceful arc at the bottom of sharp-edged cliffs. A few hundred people might stop each day during the summer road-trip season. In winter, maybe just a few dozens. But those languid days are long gone, lost in the exhaust fumes of the tour buses, party vans and SUVs that choke an area never meant to hold so much glass and steel. Each day they disgorge thousands of visitors, many from China and Germany and France and Japan.