At what time of the year were you there? Especially when wet after summer thunderstorms, the roads get torn up rather quickly by the relatively heavy traffic. The roads are wet during the winter during warm spells, but traffic is lighter and often everything is frozen solid.

Somehow I doubt that New Mexico worries very much about preserving ruins managed by another outfit. Having worked there, I can assure you I would prefer to see at least a light duty paved road (getting groceries is much easier). When traffic gets heavy enough, pavement is less environmentally impacting than a graded dirt or gravel road.

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Dead of summer about the fourth of July.

One other point that hasn't been mentioned aside from who is responsible (state or NPS) for road maintenence, is the basic issue of chronic underfunding of the National Park System. I don't have the figures immediately at hand, but for quite a few years now there has been very inadequate maintenence funds for the NPS. Many (most?) park units have a big backlog of defered maintenence of roads and other visitor facilities. And this was the case before sequestration. There is the old saying that "you get what you pay for". I find it ironic that when I visit parks such as Denali, I sometimes hear visitors grumbling and complaining about the inadequacy of this or that service or facility. Yet when it comes time to cut budgets, parks (local, state, and federal), are often amoung the first targets.

Big +1

Great Smokey Mountains NP just repaved the Cades Cove loop road that probably sees more traffic every year than some entire parks. I don't recall it ever getting more than patched before this in the last 20 years. There were areas where half the road had deteriorated to where it would be considered gravel sub-grade (potholes got bigger and deeper every year). They might have been able to continue patching it IF they could have stayed on top of it. Budget and unexpected higher priority emergency repairs probably prevented that.

I agree with AKSAR about cuts in maintenance, although I am clearly biased. When it is time to cut the budget, routine maintenance is often first on the chopping block. You can get away with that game for a little while, but it will eventually come back to bite you. Responsibility for highway maintenance varies with each park - sometimes it is the park itself, and sometimes it is the state or county, etc.

One thing to keep in mind about money spent to run and maintain National Parks, is that many parks generate work and jobs in the surrounding area. Several states offered to provide the money to run several parks during the recent shutdown. They weren't being philanthropic - it was just good business.