Salt Creek Canyon in Canyonlands National Park (CANY) has historically been used as a road. However, the canyon is now divided into three regions: No Road (NR), where vehicle use ended in 1964, Closed Road (CL), where vehicle use ended in 1998, and Road Open (RO), where vehicle use continues. Since 2000, the canyon’s invertebrate community has been surveyed to evaluate the effects of vehicle disturbance. While this study is ongoing, here we focus on some of the beetles collected during the 2000 field season. Beetles were identified to family, and classified into 90 morphospecies with 25 identified to named genera. Analysis of specimens from April 2000 showed that some species are generally distributed throughout Salt Creek Canyon while others are limited to certain trapping sites and/or sections of the canyon. Examination of functional groups indicated that, with the exception of omnivores, different trophic groups are not distributed equally between the three sections of the canyon. Also, distributions of several taxa vary considerably from month to month and year to year. Principle Components Analysis indicated that different trapping sites and sections of the canyon support different beetle communities that generally vary along the vehicle disturbance gradient. Taken together, our results demonstrate the need for 1) long-term sampling to determine which taxa to monitor, 2) increased taxonomic resolution to identify which taxa to monitor and 3) increased knowledge of the natural history of potential indicator organisms to fully understand patterns and processes in relation to vehicle disturbance in Salt Creek Canyon.