Is the sun rising or setting on the golden age of national parks?/DOI file

Is it just a pandemic phase we're going through, or has the golden age of national parks slipped away while we struggled with reservations for camping and even entering parks, when the Instagram age has made photos seemingly more important than experiences in the parks, and when a Facebook page that tracks the "dumb, dangerous, illegal, and what-where-they-thinking exploits" of Yellowstone National Park gained traction?

In just eight years, we've gone from former National Park Service Director Jonathan Jarvis fearing national parks had lost their relevancy with the American people to new NPS Director Chuck Sams trying to rebuild the agency's morale while millions of visitors wash over parks ill-equipped to handle them.

During a November visit to Hawai'i Volcanoes National Park, I watched as a couple ignored a rope barrier near the end of the Chain of Craters Road so they could stroll over and pose for photos next to the Pacific Ocean. The night before I listened in the darkness to a nearby conversation about ducking under another rope barrier so one could get a better photo of the flaming eruption in the Halema'uma'u Crater atop the Kīlauea volcano, never mind the worry about stumbling into the crater itself. That would indeed be a closeup.

Exploring the National Park System is getting more complicated, a bit at a time while the overall impact isn't recognized, much like the frog being boiled.

At Shenandoah National Park in Virginia you don't need a reservation to enter the park, but you will need one if you want to hike to Old Rag. Ditto at Zion National Park in Utah if you want to enjoy the vertiginous view from atop Angels Landing, and Yosemite National Park to count yourself among those who have stood atop Half Dome. Of course, you will most likely need a reservation to enter Arches, Glacier, or Rocky Mountain national parks this year, or to drive to the top of Cadillac Mountain in Acadia.

When I raised the question of why campsite reservations -- both front country and backcountry -- are needed in most parks during a good chunk of the year but not to actually enter a park, a superintendent replied that "in all cases it's a limited supply thing."

Isn't the front country of national parks a limited supply? Not only are we not seeing more wilderness being created, but there certainly isn't another Yellowstone or Yosemite or Zion or Grand Canyon in the wings waiting to be opened when the current versions are overrun by visitors.

The landscapes in those spectacular places should be protected from rocketing visitation and the resource-crushing and littering impacts, but how do you achieve that? Increase entrance fees and the cry of pricing out visitors becomes piercing. Require entrance reservations, and the Park Service is labeled a killjoy of spontaneity, apparently even for those coming from great distances.

"Like one of the commentors described, that it's nearly impossible to travel from the East Coast into the West to visit national parks, unless you navigate the complicated reservation system," read one of several dozen comments made on the Traveler to a poll about whether national parks are crowded. "I really feel sorry for the seniors. The park system is making it too complicated for them. What the park system is unexpectedly forcing, is a new industry to be formed, where you pay a service to plan the reservations for you for a big price."

Nearly 350 voted in the poll, and 74 percent -- 251 -- were of the opinion that national parks are too crowded. Fifty-five percent (186) said the crowds forced them to vacation elsewhere. Just 17 readers said parks weren't crowded.

In reality, outside of the brand-name parks, crowds are not an issue. And even in the Yellowstones, Rocky Mountains, and Glaciers you can quickly flee the hordes by heading down a trail. But then, not everyone who visits a national park wants to, or can, hike down a trail, as wonderful as it might be. And so they're stuck with the crowds. And if you couldn't rapidly navigate recreation.gov or afford a room in the lodge, which also requires far, far advance (and increasingly expensive) reservations, you might not be close enough to reach that trailhead.

I'm not sure when the golden age existed for national parks. It's likely a generational thing, as each generation takes away its own appreciation of the parks from what they experience. For me, growing up in the 1960s and '70s, social media didn't bring the parks into the national consciousness, Instagram wasn't around to spur a "counting coup" sort of race through the park system, reservations for lodging were made over the phone, and friendly rangers manned entrance stations and handed out brochures, information, and advice.

I remember a fall trip in the late 1980s to Bear Lake in Rocky Mountain National Park when we found solitude along the shoreline. This year from Memorial Day Weekend until October 10 you'll need a reservation to reach Bear Lake, and even that might not guarantee solitude. 

Even a decade ago lodging and camping reservations were easier to make in most parks than they are today.

Things -- the park experience -- have changed drastically, and not always in a good way. If the Traveler's poll is reflective of the whole, if 74 percent of the more than 300 million who visit national parks each year feel they're too crowded, the National Park Service, and the parks, have a serious problem not just to confront but to solve before it's too late.

"We must find a way to lower visitor traffic in our parks before it's too late to rehab the destruction," wrote Kathy Haines in a comment to the Traveler poll.

Parks need advocates, and each visitor that enters one of the more than 400 units of the National Park System is a potential advocate ... if they come away with a great experience.

"Park users that don't like crowding need to convince legislators to support limits ... and additional parks," a superintendent told me.

Additional parks won't lessen the desire to stand in front of Old Faithful or on the lip of the Grand Canyon, but they could help spread out the visitation if travelers are given the incentive to visit some of the other jewels in the kingdom and come away amazed. That's one failing today, as neither the Park Service nor the Interior Department promote the parks, though Interior officials say it will happen.

More room to roam and good reason to roam are two keys to restoring the visitor experience. Achieving those keys, though, is the tricky part.