Admission to all national parks will be free on Tuesday, in celebration of the 99th birthday of the National Park Service. President Woodrow Wilson signed legislation creating the National Park Service on Aug. 25, 1916.
Starting on Aug. 29, the adult entrance fee to the stockade at the Fort Vancouver National Historic Site will increase to $5.
The $2 increase is part of an overall initiative in the National Park Service to boost entrance fees so the parks can fund maintenance and improvement projects.
The cost of an annual permit, which admits up to four adults at a time, will increase from $10 to $30 on Aug. 29; children 15 and younger will continue to get in for free.
The fee is required only for admission to the reconstructed fort stockade. Attractions inside the stockade include reconstructions of the chief factor’s residence — where Dr. John McLoughlin would have lived 180 years ago — the blacksmith shop, the bake house and the kitchen. An adult entry is good for seven days.
Recent visitor Marika Beck wasn’t concerned about an increased entry fee.
“The fact that it’s free for kids is huge,” said Beck, a north Portland resident who brought a group of young children to the fort. “Having a place like this is super important. You get a sense of how we got here.”
On the way back to the parking lot, Beck’s young companions spent some time exploring the Fort Vancouver garden. Like all other the recreational and heritage resources outside the fort’s gates, there is no entry fee for the Hudson’s Bay Company-era garden.
The plants “all are things Dr. McLoughlin would have grown,” said Fort Vancouver volunteer Nancy Funk, site manager of the garden and the fort’s kitchen.
She had just harvested a basket of heirloom tomatoes and some prickly appearing produce slightly smaller than an egg.
“It’s a West Indian gherkin,” Funk said.
Other free attractions, Fort Vancouver Superintendent Tracy Fortmann said, include Pearson Air Museum, the Vancouver Barracks grounds, the Land Bridge, and all the events and living history re-enactments outside the stockade.
Almost all the admission money collected at Fort Vancouver will remain here to pay for improvements and new enhancements, Chief Ranger Greg Shine said. In 2014, that amounted to $39,500; visitors to Fort Vancouver paid $38,900 in daily entrance fees and $600 for annual passes, Shine said.
Fort Vancouver officials originally had proposed a pair of $2 increases in back-to-back years that would have raised the adult fee to $7 in 2016. That second $2 increase will not be implemented.
“We want to make sure Fort Vancouver is accessible as much as possible,” Fortmann said.
“We have been working on this for well over a year,” Fortmann said. That work included a market survey to see what similar locations in the Northwest are charging for admission, but it wasn’t too informative.
“There are not a lot of sites like us,” Fortmann said. “Finding a comparable site is difficult.”
Officials at Fort Vancouver also solicited public comment from Feb. 26 through March 27. It received comment from six individuals: three supported the proposed increase and three opposed it.
The adult entrance fee was raised to $3 from $2 about 15 years ago.
The fee increase is the result of a process initiated by National Park Service Director Jon Jarvis. Most visitors to national parks arrive by car, so most of the fee revenue is generated on a per-car basis. The new entrance fee at the most prominent national parks — including Grand Canyon, Yellowstone and Yosemite — is $30 per car.
A variety of federal passes also are available that include entry to national parks.
