Officials at Fort Vancouver are proposing a two-step increase in the entry fee to the reconstructed stockade — from $3 a person to $5, and then to $7 in 2016. The proposal is part of a larger initiative to increase and standardize various fees at National Park Service locations.
WASHINGTON — Just as summer begins, 130 national parks across the country are starting to charge visitors more to get inside, with entrance fees doubling and even tripling at some sites.
The increases are the first since 2006 and are taking effect at both the crown jewels in the park system — including Yellowstone, Yosemite and the Grand Canyon — and at small monuments and historic sites. Visitors entering in a car, the most common way Americans see the parks, are paying more, along with those entering on foot, motorcycle and buying annual passes.
Among the largest parks, the new prices range from $50 for an annual pass at Arches in southeast Utah (up from $25) to $30 for a car to get into the Grand Tetons in northwest Wyoming, up from $25. And in the mid-Atlantic region, the single-vehicle fee to enter Shenandoah National Park in Virginia is $25, up from $15, while the Harper’s Ferry National Historical Park in West Virginia is charging $15 per vehicle, up from $10. Motorcyclists are getting hit with some of the steepest increases; Joshua Tree in southeast California is now charging them $20, up from $5, for example.
Visitors also should prepare for higher fees to camp, shower, paddleboat and tour caves at a total of 176 parks as the National Park Service boosts fees for amenities, too.
Park officials say the increases are needed to help them get to a backlog in construction projects, many of them vital to the visitor experience. The agency’s maintenance needs have piled up for years as cuts from Congress have eroded both operating and capital budgets. Half of all paved roads in the national park system have been designated as in fair to poor condition, park officials said in a report last year. More than two dozen bridges need repair, as do more than one-third of the hiking trails — some 6,700 miles.
Almost every park that now charges fees is raising them, but about two-thirds of the system of 407 parks, historic sites and monuments is free and will stay that way.
About 292,000 million people visited national parks last year.
Park officials note that entrance fees across the system have not changed since 2008, and that the majority have not increased since 2006. Higher prices were banned since then, largely because the Park Service wanted to keep prices low and boost visitors during the recession. Parks Director Jonathan Jarvis lifted the ban this year, telling park superintendents last fall to begin the public meetings and outreach that must go with any increases. The fees vary widely, as do the increases.
