
All U.S. National Parks Are Free to Enter on Sunday - chablent
https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/all-us-national-parks-are-free-to-enter-on-sunday
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shawnbaden
Wallace Stegner, 1983:

"National parks are the best idea we ever had. Absolutely American, absolutely
democratic, they reflect us at our best rather than our worst."

Source:
[https://www.nps.gov/parkhistory/hisnps/npsthinking/famousquo...](https://www.nps.gov/parkhistory/hisnps/npsthinking/famousquotes.htm)

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scarejunba
What does 'democratic' mean in this context? Accessible, free to all?

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carrja99
Reflecting the best of us.

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FiveSquared
Don’t make HN a political flame war

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Emma_Goldman
Speaking as someone from the UK, I'm a little alarmed that you have to pay to
enter national parks in the first place.

Are they all that busy?

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gumby
The parks are heavily curated and managed — think of them as open air museums.
Personally I don’t like visiting national parks because of this - I prefer the
pretty unregulated wilderness and BLM land. But many people aren’t prepared
for the wild (and it really _is_ wild; there’s nothing like it in the UK, more
like the Aussie bush in level of isolation) so these parks are great to get
people exposed to the outdoors.

Parks constitute a tiny percentage of public open land. And for the ones I’ve
visited really have been built around special places (Grand Canyon, Yosemite,
Larsen, etc) and why not? If it’s someone’s only exposure to nature why not
make it the best. And I won’t have to see them when I’m in the desolation
wilderness.

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davb
> The parks are heavily curated and managed — think of them as open air
> museums.

Most museums in the UK are free to visit too. They generally have donation
boxes which is a great way to let those who can afford to do so support the
museum. And those who can't are not excluded.

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throwaway427
The Smithsonian in DC is also free to visit.

We aren't really talking about the same thing here. Many National Parks are
massive properties with extensive ecological concerns and staff overhead. But
they aren't even close to the sole extent of publicly owned land, that's where
the BLM comes in. And there are the national grasslands and the forest service
lands as well. We haven't even touched on state owned public lands or
conservancy lands.

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njarboe
The amount of land set aside for wilderness and parks in the US is amazing.
More than all cities and towns (urban) combined. This webpage[1] as a lot of
cool maps of US land use.

[1][https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2018-us-land-
use/](https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2018-us-land-use/)

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buboard
What a wonderful thing the US national parks are. They are remarkably cheap,
with a single pass you can visit all of them, which is a perfect way for
tourists to roadtrip the US.

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vibrolax
Indeed, the "America the Beautiful" $80 annual pass, good for vehicle +
occupants admission to all Federal fee areas is an incredible value. You can
buy it right at the gate as you visit your first park, instead of the standard
entry fee. No need to do anything in advance of your visit.

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romed
If you've got a kid in 4th grade, all national parks are free all year long.

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drivers99
Nice! [https://www.everykidinapark.gov/](https://www.everykidinapark.gov/)

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Park_Worker
A general comment on public lands:

Use them. Stakeholder usage determines regulation.

Yes, NP’s are ludicrously crowded, sometimes; but not actually always.

The fed land system is something the US has mainly done right, IMHO. Could
improve? Of course. But, having spent solid time in another three dozen
countries, what we have is pretty, pretty OK.

Support your local wilds.

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phjesusthatguy3
I wonder how that works for something like the MotorCities National Heritage
Area (that I learned about just now). One of the things they list are the
Diego Rivera murals in the Detroit Institute of Arts[0]; is the DIA going to
waive their entrance fee Sunday?

[0][https://www.motorcities.org/locations/diego-rivera-murals-
at...](https://www.motorcities.org/locations/diego-rivera-murals-at-the-
detroit-institute-of-arts)

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janzer
National Heritage Areas (NHAs), while administered by the National Park
Service, are not National Parks. To quote from the NPS website[0]:

 _NHAs are not national park units. Rather, NPS partners with, provides
technical assistance, and distributes matching federal funds from Congress to
NHA entities. NPS does not assume ownership of land inside heritage areas or
impose land use controls._

[0] [https://www.nps.gov/articles/what-is-a-national-heritage-
are...](https://www.nps.gov/articles/what-is-a-national-heritage-area.htm)

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tranchms
If it’s gonna be more crowded than peak season, I’d rather not, unfortunately.

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djsumdog
It's really crazy how crowded national parks are. In a lot of ways, I feel
like charging a fee to enter adds to the problem. Sure they need the money to
help maintain all of that area, but they also use that money to advertise so
more people buy passes. They use that money to advertise their volunteer
programs to get volunteers to work on trails.

It's be interesting to look at visitor data for parks that went from free to
paid (if they even collected such data years ago) and see if charging for
parks and the business around them has actually made them more crowded.

Personally, I don't think there should be a fee for entering a National Park.
It should be paid for by our taxes. Just skim off a tiny bit from those
billions used for defence and parks could be fully funded for years.

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RandallBrown
National Parks aren't very crowded if you go more than a mile or two past the
visitor center.

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npsbackcountry
This is exceedingly correct. I work in remore areas and usually see no actual
visitors.

As to daytrips, and as mentioned above, try out non-NP wilderness areas. Since
this is HN, consider emmigrant wilderness rather than yosemite—as example.

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glup
Second the Emigrant Wilderness — you can basically always get a permit when
Yosemite is full and it has many of the same ecosystems. And fewer, nicer
bears.

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shshhdhs
Remember folks: pack it in, pack it out. Let’s keep our Parks clean,
especially when the Park Service has had budget cuts.

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LanceH
Thanks, I just don't get enough lecturing in real life or on the internet.

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wcarron
Don't forget: Pack it in, Pack it out. Keep our parks clean.

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dogecoinbase
Not Alcatraz! From
[https://www.nps.gov/goga/planyourvisit/fees.htm](https://www.nps.gov/goga/planyourvisit/fees.htm)
:

 _The cost of the ferry ticket is not an entrance fee—there is no charge to
visit the grounds of Alcatraz Island.

... All private vessels are prohibited from docking on the island._

I guess you could swim.

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toomuchtodo
Or parachute in!

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djsumdog
Like in that movie from the 90s, "The Rock"

*sadly, not actually staring Dwayne Johnson

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nostrademons
The Rock didn't feature any parachute drops. Hummel came over by ordinary
ferry, the mercenaries landed via helicopter, and the SEALs arrived
underwater.

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eBombzor
"National" parks should only be free to the sovereign tribes that were forced
out of there by colonizers. In fact all of that land should be given back to
the tribal nations who previously did a great job managing those lands before
the US National Park/Forest service and Smokey the terrorist came along and
decided they knew more about the land than the people who previously spent
thousands of years carefully tending the land.

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hueving
And what about the tribes that those tribes forced out? This notion that
everything was peaceful without territory wars before "colonizers" is a joke.

There is no single tribe that has carefully tended the land for thousands of
years. Additionally, since they lacked a meaningful method of keeping
knowledge beyond word of mouth, any non-common technique would have to be
rediscovered every 100 years. They weren't carefully tending to the land, they
were just struggling to get by with their crap agricultural skills.

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eBombzor
What a poorly educated reply. No one mentioned any notion of peace before
colonizers. How is that relevant?

Nearly everything you said is just plain wrong.

> no single tribe that has carefully tended the land for thousands of years

Yes you are right, there were MULTIPLE soveriegn tribes that did that. And yes
they did tend the land for thousands of years. Look up Tending the wild by Kat
Anderson.

> since they lacked a meaningful method of keeping knowledge beyond word of
> mouth, any non-common technique would have to be rediscovered every 100
> years

Huh? So I guess there was not a chance that one of those millions of native
Americans still living on reservation lands in the 1900s passed down any
knowledge of how they lived. Interesting assumption there chap.

>crap agricultural skills

"Crap agricultural skills"? Good lord. Americans are the ones with "crap
agricultural skills." It's not normal for soil to be unusable for half a
decade after farming FYI. Ever heard of soil erosion? Look up Three Sisters,
[https://milkweed.org/book/braiding-
sweetgrass](https://milkweed.org/book/braiding-sweetgrass), Karletta Chief's
field work, Indigenous Environmental Perspectives:NAP.

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hueving
>Yes you are right, there were MULTIPLE soveriegn tribes that did that.

No, there were none that have done that. There is _no civilization_ that has
lasted thousands of years, let alone some tribe.

>Interesting assumption there chap.

Not an assumption at all. Without writing, there was absolutely no useful way
to preserve knowledge for any long period of time. Best you have are
traditions and stories, which are lossy at best and easily wiped out by
conflict.

>"Crap agricultural skills"? Good lord. Americans are the ones with "crap
agricultural skills."

If it weren't for the agricultural technology and skills enabled by the
scientific institutions of the "colonizers", we would still be having our
children starving to death during droughts like the tribes and the early
settlers. If it weren't for that technology, there wouldn't be enough farm
land to feed all of the humans on the planet.

If it weren't for the "colonizers", tribes would still be murdering each other
over territory during droughts, dying from simple diseases, suffering from
malnutrition, living in terrible shelter, etc.

If tribes really were go great back then, none of the Native American
reservations would be using any modern technology and people would be
clamoring to join them and learn their ways.

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devmunchies
Are entrance fees for cars only? Can backpackers walk through a park without
paying?

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outworlder
In many (most?) cases you can. But you may need a permit to enter some areas,
which may or may not require a fee (if it does require a fee, it's usually
pretty small). For instance
[https://www.nps.gov/yose/planyourvisit/wpres.htm](https://www.nps.gov/yose/planyourvisit/wpres.htm)

Usually these fees are for multiple days. For Yosemite: car fee is valid for a
week(there are other deals if you want to stay for longer or visit multiple
times an year). The wilderness permit... I don't really know. You do have to
submit start and end dates for each trip, but the fee covers the duration.

EDIT:

Also Yosemite: it appears that foot traffic is charged too.
[https://www.nps.gov/yose/planyourvisit/fees.htm](https://www.nps.gov/yose/planyourvisit/fees.htm)

That highly depends on the park.

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netfire
It’s $5 for a group wilderness permit application plus $5 per person per
permit. I think it’s another $5/person if you want to add on the Half Dome
summit.

