About 50 camped on five acres that Ms. Sheehan purchased with money from her slain son's insurance. His death in Iraq in 2004 led Ms. Sheehan to begin the protest. The camp officially closed Sunday.

"We always knew that last August could never be replicated. It was a once-in-a-lifetime phenomenon," said retired Army Col. Ann Wright, who resigned as a senior diplomat at the U.S. Embassy in Mongolia in 2003 to protest the war.

The group, which held Thanksgiving and Easter rallies that drew a couple of hundred people, attributed the lower numbers to Mr. Bush's absence. He cut his usual monthlong working vacation to just 10 days in August.

"I think generally people are bored with Cindy Sheehan on one hand, just because they've gotten to know her and her extreme politics," Kristinn Taylor, spokesman for FreeRepublic.com, said Sunday. "Last year she was called the Rosa Parks of the [antiwar] movement. This year no one's calling her that."

The dwindling Crawford protest indicates that any tactic loses its effectiveness over time, said Dr. Lawrence Wittner, a history professor at the State University of New York at Albany who has written about peace movements.

He said the antiwar movement is taking several types of actions, such as backing political candidates and lobbying Congress. Also, protesters show up at many Bush events across the country.

"While there was a sudden flare-up around Cindy Sheehan, a lot of the fuel for that is lighting other fires at this point," Dr. Wittner said. "I do think she's still a vital part of it."

"I just want to lead where my heart goes, and my heart is with soldiers who don't want to go to Iraq for the second or third or fourth time," Ms. Sheehan said Sunday. "I think that's where the heart of our movement is now."

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