Someone tagged “Grug” on rocks older than dinosaurs at Utah’s Arches National Park

The Shutdown Left No One Watching

On November 5, 2025, a retired park ranger was hiking toward the longest natural arch in North America when she spotted something that made her heart sink.

Bright white spray paint covered the red sandstone, spelling out “Grug,” the name of a caveman from a DreamWorks cartoon.

Smiley faces and video game characters marked the rocks nearby.

The government had been shut down for over a month, and with most rangers sent home, no one was patrolling the trails. What happened next shows exactly why some people wanted these parks closed until staff could return.

A Retired Ranger Finds Fresh Paint

Allyson Mathis had worked for the National Park Service for years at Canyonlands, Capitol Reef, and Grand Canyon.

Now she lives in Moab, Utah, and hikes the parks she once protected.

On November 5, she was walking with a friend in Devils Garden, a popular hiking area filled with arch and spire formations, when she spotted white paint on several rocks.

The paint appeared fresh, likely applied after the last rainfall in late October. She knew immediately what she was looking at.

“Shutdown-related damage. This is not good,” she thought.

Spray Paint Vandal Recreates a Comic

The word “Grug” appeared in multiple locations across Devils Garden.

Grug Crood is the protagonist in DreamWorks’ The Croods franchise, a 2013 animated film about a prehistoric family.

Nicolas Cage voices the character, an overprotective caveman father who teaches his children his motto of “never not be afraid.”

In May 2025, memes referencing the movie emerged on social media, with the most common version showing Grug saying “rhymes with Grug.”

Someone decided the ancient sandstone formations of Arches National Park needed this cartoon caveman’s name on them.

The Longest Shutdown in US History

The federal government shut down on October 1, 2025, when Congress failed to pass a spending bill. The shutdown lasted 43 days, making it the longest in history.

At least 670,000 federal employees were furloughed, while roughly 730,000 continued to work without pay. National parks across the country operated with skeleton crews.

Mathis said the vandalism reflects the broader effects of the prolonged work stoppage.

“All that’s happening right now are people going in the parks and they’re enjoying it, but there’s none of this preservation,” she said.

Utah Paid to Keep Its Parks Open

The state of Utah pledged to keep its “Mighty Five” national parks open throughout the shutdown, providing $8,000 per day since early October to run visitor centers, clean restrooms, and maintain roads.

Fall is peak tourist season in southeast Utah, and state officials worried about the economic impact on gateway towns.

But even with that support, most parks operated with fewer rangers and reduced services, leaving resource protection and maintenance work largely on hold.

The money kept bathrooms clean. It did not keep anyone watching the trails.

Video Game Characters and Handprints

The Grug tags were not the only graffiti Mathis found. The images included handprints, smiley faces, and a character from the online game Among Us.

Other graffiti spelled out “FNAF,” a reference to the video game and movie franchise Five Nights at Freddy’s. “Most of the graffiti is very light scratching, and you can remove that really easy,” Mathis said.

“But paint graffiti is unusual, and a lot of paint graffiti, and there was quite a bit of it, is really unusual.”

Dogs and Toilet Paper on the Trail

The spray paint was not the only violation Mathis witnessed that day.

She noticed toilet paper scattered nearby and a dog on the trail, which is prohibited on all trails in Arches. “It was everywhere,” Mathis told Outside magazine.

“It was heartbreaking and upsetting, but unfortunately not surprising.”

“When rangers are out there visible, I think people are more likely to respect the park,” she said. Without that presence, some visitors treated the park like it had no rules at all.

Landscape Arch Could Collapse Any Day

The graffiti appeared along the trail to Landscape Arch, one of the park’s most famous formations. Landscape Arch is the longest arch in North America with a light opening of 306 feet.

This span is only 6 feet in diameter at its narrowest.

The most recent recorded rockfall events occurred in the 1990s when one large slab fell in 1991 and then two additional large rockfalls occurred in 1995.

The Park Service was forced to close the trail that ran beneath the arch after those falls. The formation that took millions of years to create could collapse without warning.

Spray Paint Soaks Into Sandstone

Removing graffiti from sandstone is nothing like cleaning it off a building.

According to National Park Service preservation guidance, spray paint is typically harder to remove from sandstone than light scratching because it can penetrate the rock’s porous surface and leave visible stains even after cleaning.

Even when paint is scrubbed out, it can become microplastics and end up in natural food supplies.

In some cases, graffiti near ancient petroglyphs or pictographs is nearly impossible to remove and rangers have to leave it.

Cleanup Takes Specialists and Spatulas

Workers test different chemicals to figure out which will loosen the material without damaging rock, then rinse it off with lots of low-pressure hot water, gently scraping each layer away with plastic kitchen spatulas.

In 2022, the NPS published a video showing seven rangers and volunteers at Zion National Park who collectively worked 35 hours to clean 150 square feet of graffiti.

Removing graffiti on exposed rocks can cost up to $1,350 per site due to the specialized chemicals and equipment required.

The Arches damage will take trained professionals and many hours to address.

Vandals Face Federal Charges

Defacing a national park is not just rude. It is a crime.

Vandals who commit illegal acts in US national parks may be guilty of a class B misdemeanor, punishable with fines of up to $5,000 and up to six months in jail.

The Park Service has launched an investigation into the vandalism, though it has yet to appeal to the public for information.

Mathis noted national parks sometimes ask the public for information to help them get to the bottom of vandalism, but that doesn’t appear to have happened as of mid-November.

Without Rangers, Parks Suffered

On November 12, the longest government shutdown in history ended with the enactment of a continuing resolution that will fund the government through January 30, 2026.

Rangers returned to work.

But the damage was already done. SFGATE visited the park on November 12 and confirmed that the graffiti remained more than a week after it was first discovered, along with fresh-looking carvings in nearby sandstone.

Millions of years made Landscape Arch. Forty-three days without rangers was enough for someone to mark it with a cartoon caveman’s name.

Visiting Arches National Park, Utah

Arches National Park is located five miles north of Moab, Utah.

The Devils Garden Trailhead, where the vandalized area is located, sits at the end of the 18-mile scenic drive through the park.

The trail to Landscape Arch is 1.6 miles round trip on a flat, well-maintained path. Entry costs $30 per vehicle for a seven-day pass.

From March through October, visitation is extremely high, and parking lots may be full for much of the day.

Consider entering the park before 8 am. Timed entry reservations are required during peak season.

This article was created with AI assistance and human editing.

Read more from this brand:

• The Civil War veteran who found healing and home under the shadow of Delicate Arch in Utah
• The Utah discovery that literally saved America’s nuclear weapons program
• Before Mark Twain, this reluctant writer made American novels famous across the globe