YOSEMITE NATIONAL PARK, California — Visitors and workers at Yosemite National Park in California’s Sierra Nevada Mountains were settling into a new reality Wednesday after a frantic 24 hours of uncertainty over whether and how the iconic destination would remain open during a lapse in federal funding.
With both Republicans and Democrats clamoring to keep up appearances at iconic destinations that draw in millions of visitors and billions in revenues annually, the Trump administration decided to keep Yosemite and other parks mostly open with skeleton crews focused on public safety, while furloughing the majority of National Park Service staff, from scientists to administrators. That translated into a bustling October weekday at California’s most iconic park, which was turning 135 years old on Wednesday.
Entrance booths were open — but unmanned, leaving drivers to roll through without paying the usual $35 fee. The park’s official welcome center was shuttered, but a private concessionaire was still running busy restaurants, hotels and shuttles. Park rangers, who declined to speak to POLITICO, were still issuing backcountry permits — though they were telling visitors those would be self-issued starting Thursday.
Some visitors saw their partisan allegiances reflected in the partial closure. “It’s Trump’s whole atmosphere,” said Jed Caswall, who voted for Kamala Harris in the last presidential election and was visiting Yosemite from Colorado. “He’s on a clear mission.” Caswall had to get a relative to text the news of the shutdown because of limited internet access at his campground near the park.
Conan Popovich, a Florida Republican on a weeks-long tour of national parks, was also following the hour-to-hour drama unfold. “I really thought the Democrats would change their mind and vote at the last minute, but they didn’t,” he said. But they were both grateful the park stayed open: “We’re here to hike,” said Caswall.
The uncertainty scrambled at least some plans: On Wednesday morning, a group of hikers had pivoted to visiting museums in the gateway community of Mariposa instead of the park itself because their tour company wasn’t sure of the availability of bathrooms and other services in the park. Justin Logee, a tour guide with the company, said the shutdown was stressful and “frustrating on a human level.”
“Our government is a mess,” he said. “It’s their job to communicate, but everyone’s so mad at each other.”
And international travelers were left scratching their heads. Mary Ziv, an Israeli tourist, said she had just learned of the shutdown on Tuesday. Before heading into the park, she stopped by an information booth in Mariposa to figure out what was happening. “I was counting on the park rangers,” Ziv said, citing concerns that another California headline-grabber — wildfire — might erupt with only limited staff around. Instead, she was told to pack her trash back out just in case park staff couldn’t get to it, as happened during a 35-day shutdown in 2018 and 2019.
Ken Yager, a longtime Yosemite climber who founded the Yosemite Climbing Association, said he’d rather the park be closed than understaffed because of the trash and vandalism that piles up, sometimes in ways that are irreversible, like on far-flung granite peaks. He and others had just wrapped up several days of cleaning up the park as part of an annual effort called Yosemite Facelift.
“We can clean it up again, and we will clean it up again, but that just means we can’t focus on other projects instead,” Yager said. His shutdown concern, he said, was that the Trump administration would privatize more of the park’s visitor services, much of which are already contracted out. Yosemite’s federal staff, meanwhile, has already gone through a roller coaster this year, including a unionization vote this summer and the firing of a scientist who unfurled a transgender rights flag on El Capitan.
California state Sen. Marie Alvarado-Gil, a Republican whose district includes both Yosemite and Death Valley National Park, said the shutdown has a “lopsided impact on rural regions more dependent on federal funding than their urban counterparts.”
“These partisan tug-of-wars in Washington may make for great ratings on national news networks, but they leave rural areas in a lurch,” she said.
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