ROAR Welcomes You!

Whether you call us "ROAR," or our full name "Rags Over the Arkansas River," our organization is dedicated to preserving and protecting the headwaters of the Arkansas River, the Bighorn Sheep Canyon, its inhabitants and the communities that depend upon them.

Our founding project has been to formally oppose Christo and Jeanne Claude's "Over the River" project. This project involves suspending horizontal fabric panels within a 45 mile stretch over the Arkansas River's Bighorn Sheep Canyon. Hence the name "Rags Over the Arkansas River." The acronym ROAR soon became our primary moniker.

How to find out more

On our website you will learn about:

• How the influx of the projected 600,000-1,000,000 tourists will create a traffic nightmare on the narrow 2-lane canyon highway (U.S. 50).
• How emergency and fire personnel will have great difficulty responding to accidents or fires in the canyon or surrounding area.
• Concerns as to the increase in visitors also bringing more litter and human waste to the canyon.
• Permanent defacement of the riverbanks.
• Bighorn sheep, elk, deer and other wildlife kept from accessing the river for water.
• Bald and golden eagles kept from fishing and hunting.
• Difficulty, or even impossibility, of fishing of these waters.
• Negative economic impact on commercial and recreation industries that travel the canyon daily.