Limiting visitors at crowded national parks

The following is excerpted from Our National Parks, a book published in 1901 by the naturalist John Muir, who campaigned for the creation and protection of national parks.

The tendency nowadays to wander in wildernesses is delightful to see. Thousands of tired, nerve-shaken, over-civilized people are beginning to find out that going to the mountains is going home; that wildness is a necessity; and that mountain parks and reservations are useful not only as fountains of timber and irrigating rivers, but as fountains of life. Awakening from the stupefying effects of the vice of over-industry and the deadly apathy of luxury, they are trying as best they can to mix and enrich their own little ongoings with those of Nature, and to get rid of rust and disease. Briskly venturing and roaming, some are washing off sins and cobweb cares of the devil’s spinning in all-day storms on mountains; sauntering in rosiny pinewoods or in gentian meadows, brushing through chaparral, bending down and parting sweet, flowery sprays; tracing rivers to their sources, getting in touch with the nerves of Mother Earth; jumping from rock to rock, feeling the life of them, learning the songs of them, panting in whole-souled exercise, and rejoicing in deep, long-drawn breaths of pure wildness. This is fine and natural and full of promise. So also is the growing interest in the care and preservation of forests and wild places in general, and in the half wild parks and gardens of towns. Even the scenery habit in its most artificial forms, mixed with spectacles, silliness, and kodaks; its devotees arrayed more gorgeously than scarlet tanagers, frightening the wild game with red umbrellas,—even this is encouraging, and may well be regarded as a hopeful sign of the times.

The following is excerpted from a statement by the superintendent of a heavily visited national park, announcing a timed-entry pilot program.

On a July Saturday last year, the line of cars at our east entrance stretched four miles. Every parking area in the valley was full by 8:15 a.m. Visitors circled for hours, parked on fragile meadows, and left trash and human waste along trails that were never built for such numbers. Rangers spent their days directing traffic instead of teaching visitors about the park.

Our pilot does not close the park. From late May to mid-October, visitors entering during peak hours will reserve a one-hour entry window. Anyone may enter without a reservation before 6 a.m. or after 3 p.m., and visitors with campground or lodging reservations are exempt. Our goal is not to keep people out of their parks. It is to make sure that what people come for, whether quiet, wildlife or a trail they can actually walk, is still here when they arrive.

The following is excerpted from an interview with the owner of a family-run outfitter and café in a town just outside a national park.

Half my customers used to be people who decided at breakfast to drive up to the park. Now they check the website, see there are no slots left, and go somewhere else. Not to my town, not to my café. My July sales were down eighteen percent.

The park says you can still come in before six or after three. Tell that to a family with a toddler driving in from four hours away. The reservation system works fine for people who plan everything months ahead. It doesn't work for the spontaneous trip, and the spontaneous trip is a lot of what keeps this town alive.

The following is excerpted from an article in a magazine about public lands.

Reservation systems are often described as neutral: first come, first served. But 'first' is not neutral. Popular entry windows can be gone minutes after they open online. People with fast internet, flexible jobs and the ability to plan a vacation months ahead have a head start. Families who work hourly shifts, or who live in rural areas with poor connections, do not.

National parks belong to everyone, and their visitors have long been less diverse than the country as a whole. A system that limits crowds should not make that worse. Some parks hold back a share of reservations until the day before, or use lotteries instead of a race to the keyboard. Those choices matter as much as the limit itself.