How The Federal Government Fueled The Growth of Commercial RV Parks

Above, camping at a commercial RV park near Crater Lake National Park in 2017. Photo by Armand Vaquer.

Once upon a time, it was cheap to camp and the necessity for making reservations was rare. The only place we had problems in getting a campsite was in the late-1950s to early-1960s was at the state park at Morro Bay. Only one out of three times did we get a campsite (it was in 1959, I think). That was a trip with my maternal grandfather, paternal grandparents and my parents. The other trips we ended up at a motel.

State and national parks charged very little for someone to pitch a tent or pull into a campsite with a trailer or truck camper. 

Nowadays, it has gotten more expensive to camp in state or national parks and reservations are necessary. It is easier to obtain a campsite at a commercial campground near a national park than it is to get one at that national park.

Now, people have choices on where they camp in their tent or RV. Thanks to the federal government, commercial campgrounds and RV parks have sprung up.

This is the topic of an article in RV Travel by Chuck Woodbury.

He begins it with:

Suddenly, it seems to me, I am an elder citizen. This isn’t something I anticipated happening so soon 30 or 40 years ago. Back when I began traveling with an RV, when I was in my early 30s, the idea of me reaching retirement age was an abstract idea. “Growing old” and “forever” were easily spoken in the same breath.

Surprise: Time flew!

Now, as an older member of the RVing community, I know a few things that today’s content creators don’t know. They can’t. They haven’t been around long enough. They’re not old and wise like me. (I write that with a smile.)

When I began RVing, thousands upon thousands of campgrounds were free or just a few dollars a night. They were mostly public campgrounds—Forest Service, National Park, State Park, and community parks. For anyone who had an inkling to build an RV park as a business, it was hard to justify: How do you compete with “free” or “almost free?”

Back then, services in public parks, including campgrounds, were mostly funded by our tax dollars.

Then one day, with tax dollars not so plentiful, to balance their budgets, parks began to set fees for services, or raise existing ones. I remember when I worked my college summers for the Forest Service, installing little cash boxes at campsites in the Tahoe National Forest. Campers selected a site and deposited a dollar bill into the box for each night.

To read more, go here.