Gateway Towns Grateful For National Park Visitors, But...

Above, traffic in West Yellowstone, Montana. Photo by Armand Vaquer.

My first visit to Zion National Park was in August 1969. 

It wasn't a difficult trip. There were no crowds and we were able to get a campsite at the Watchman Campground easily. Those days are gone.

These days, crowds are clogging the roads and parking lots in the national parks. They are also spilling over into gateway towns. While they are grateful for the revenue they receive from visitors, the visitors are causing traffic jams and other problems.

National Parks Traveler has posted an article gateway towns and what they have to put up with.

They begin it with:

Kim Cloud circled the parking lot at Jordan Pond House, a popular and scenery blessed gift shop and restaurant known for popovers in Acadia National Park. She passed cars parked on the curb – their owners ignored the no parking signs --  and resisted the temptation to follow those who left their vehicles in spots reserved for RVs.

“By 9:30 a.m., the place looked like Disney World,” said Cloud, who traveled from New Jersey to Acadia in mid-August.

Tourists create traffic jams, make parking difficult, and increase police calls in national park gateway communities. But they also generate revenues used to support town amenities, including community centers, parks, trails, sidewalks, police, and water treatment facilities, in small towns across the country. For the small town leaders, the crush of high-season visitation has forced them to balance business against community needs and concerns.

“On any given day we have as many or more visitors than local residents,” said Tawny Knuteson-Boyd, a member of the Moab (Utah) City Council.  Located just outside Arches National Park, and less than an hour from Canyonlands National Park and Dead Horse Point State Park, Moab has 53,000 full-time residents and sees 3-5 million annual visitors drawn by the red-rock park landscapes and surrounding U.S. Bureau of Land Management lands.

Other towns outside national parks face a similar visitor influx. For example, there were 782,000 visits to Acadia in July – a record high, said John Kelly, management assistant to the park’s superintendent. 

To read more, go here.