The Elk Mountain Campground at Wind Cave National Park/Kurt Repanshek file

Travel the National Park System long enough and, if you're a camper, you're bound to develop a few favorite campgrounds. Elk Mountain Campground at Wind Cave National Park in South Dakota certainly is one of mine, and the Needles Campground at Canyonlands National Park in Utah is another. They are clean campgrounds, with well-spaced sites, tent pads, and decent restroom facilities.

But not all campgrounds are created equal, and not all campers look for the same things when it comes to pitching camp. Which is why the National Park Service is working to envision the 21st century campground.

Certainly, it can quickly be said that some campgrounds need to be reconfigured to provide for more space between individual sites. Privacy is a good thing to have. Restrooms with hot-and-cold running water are nice, as are those campgrounds that offer sink basins where you can clean your dishes.

But is WiFi needed? Should every campground offer a camp store? Would it be nice to have cabins for rent for those who don't like to sleep on the ground, or pull-through sites that will accommodate a 40-foot Class A motorhome towing a Jeep? Are bigger sites needed, to accommodate larger or extended families?

These are some of the questions the National Park Service is digging into with the help of outside consultants that took an inventory of NPS campgrounds, looked at the groups that are using them, and tried to list the demands today’s campers want.

The consultants -- CBRE and CHM Government Services -- came away with one big positive: "Overall, the camping industry is strong. Long-term demand appears robust, and growth is driven primarily through the increase in annual camping households and their higher frequency to camp."

But once you start to get down into the weeds, you can appreciate the hefty task ahead of the Park Service and its planners:

• There are 502 campgrounds in the National Park System, with 16,648 campsites.
• Out of those 502 campgrounds, there are just 14 camp stores, in 11 parks.
• There are 1,015 comfort stations, or restrooms
• 1,889 campsites have electrical hook-ups across 36 campgrounds
• Just 33 campgrounds offer WiFi.
• Just 130 campgrounds have hot showers year-round.
• Just 130 campgrounds have RV dump stations.
• There are just 60 amphitheaters for interpretive programs.

Camping is a huge industry in the United States. It dwarfs all other categories of the Outdoor Recreation sector when it comes to economic might, generating nearly $170 billion in activity in 2018, while second-place fishing generated $35.8 billion.

While the report contains many positives, ranging from the overall health of the camping industry to strong participation by Hispanics and Asian-Americans and a 22 percent increase in "annual camper households from 2014-2018," in recent years there has been a drop in camping in the National Park System. Combined, tent camper nights and RV overnights in park campgrounds dropped from 6.4 million user nights in 2016, the National Park Service's centennial year, to just more than 6 million in 2018. But the decline has actually been going on for decades, said Derrick Crandall, the counselor of the National Park Hospitality Association that represents many of the concessionaires that operate campgrounds in the park system.

"Camping in national parks is actually down substantially from where it was 30 years ago. And there are many reasons," he said. "Some of which are appropriate for the Park Service to address, some of which may not be. The growth in camping overall nationally is not reflected in the growth, or lack of growth, in camping in national parks.” 

Part of the problem, said Crandall, is the loss of some park campgrounds to infrastructure woes and a maintenance backlog of roughly $350 million for park campgrounds.

"We have lost a large number of national park campgrounds and campsites because of maintenance problems, whether it’s water systems or just manpower shortages," he said during an interview on National Parks Traveler's weekly podcast. "So we’ve reduced the capacity of national parks to host camping, and we’ve not made accommodations for people who decide they want something more."

That "something more" ranges from more, and more reliable, WiFi networks, alternatives to sleeping on the ground, and larger RV sites with dedicated hookups that negate the need for noisy generators, Crandall said.

"I don’t think success in visiting a national park needs to be reflected in carrying a 45-pound pack, including your tent and sleeping bag and everything else. I think you are just fine if you stay in a national park and use a cot in a tent," he said. "I think you’re fine if you stay in a primitive cabin that may allow some cooking on something other than an outdoor fire pit. I think those are all accommodations to change that’s going on in our lifestyle that we can certainly provide for in national park campgrounds.”

The study performed for the Park Service indicate that tent camping remains the most popular option with visitors, followed by RVs, and cabins. This mix of desires is the conundrum the Park Service faces. There's an array of different tastes for camping in the parks, and finding the sweet spot for all likely won't be easy.

Despite the growth in the RV industry since the 1980s, the overall number of overnight stays for RV users at National Parks is a long-term downward trend. This trend may be reversed with curing deferred maintenance and implementing other worthwhile infrastructure improvements. The CBRE Team believes that the improvements important to implement are those that support RVs without significantly impacting negatively the aesthetics of NPS campgrounds. Initiatives such as reinforcing existing roads, redesigning campgrounds allowing for wider roads and pull-throughs, longer pads, and buried electrical cables, water and/or sewer lines should support modern RVs while keeping the existing feel of campgrounds.

Crandall appreciates the different audiences, and believes each can be accommodated.

“We clearly believe that there can be visually positive kinds of advances that actually would allow our campgrounds to not look like the commercial campgrounds in the gateway communities. That’s not what we’re after," he said. "Do we want to offer some of the same amenities, like basic stores and other things? Absolutely. But we don’t have to do it in the same way. I don’t think anybody that I know of thinks there should be swimming pools in national park campgrounds.

"I think we’re talking about places that still are respectful of, and appropriate for, being in a national park setting," he said.

While Crandall is a strong poponent of improved WiFi in campground settings -- “WiFi is a tremendous tool. I don’t get it in terms of people who just are emotionally upset about the idea of WiFi, because they can turn it off." -- the report's authors noted that there is a difference of opinion among campground users when it comes to that amenity.

"The proportion of campers who state that the use of technology detracts from their experiences has remained stable in recent years. However, there is an increase in the percentage who say it enhances their experiences with a corresponding drop in those who say it has no impact. This growing camper segment who say technology detracts from their experience is an important segment to understand," they wrote. "For instance in 2018, 48 percent of campers report that technology detracts from camping in some way, while 27 percent indicate it enhances their experience. A solution to providing both groups of campers with the experience they are seeking is to provide primitive tenting sites with charging stations. This amenity may be inconspicuous for those looking to escape technology."  

National Park Service personnel have emphasized that they're not looking for "cookie-cutter campgrounds," said Crandall. "We should have differences between Acadia and Yosemite and all of the different kind of units, but I think as you look at some parks, like Badlands or Big Bend, that are pretty far from any kind of gateway communities; those may be logical places to either make room for larger RVs or to provide some four-sided structures, some cabins for people to stay in.”

The Park Service plans to move forward with evolving its campgrounds by turning to six parks -- Big Bend, Lake Mead National Recreation Area, Great Smoky Mountains National Park, Olympic National Park, the Blue Ridge Parkway, and Glen Canyon National Recreation Area -- to develop pilot projects for campground designs. Crandall believes that approach should not look five or ten years down the road regarding what campers want, but rather 30 or 40 years.

"I think there’s a real legitimate question about will we have big Class A motorhomes in 10 or 15 or 20 years? Certainly we’ll have some, because there are a huge number in existence right now, they don’t wear out very fast, so we’ll still be seeing some," he said. "But will that be where the market is growing fastest? Probably not. I think there will be more people who fly into Denver, hop in a hybrid or electric vehicle and drive up to Rocky Mountain National Park, and in those cases I think we need to look at the factors that can contribute to a great park experience."

Tent campgrounds might be entirely separate from RV campgrounds, and perhaps there will be more cabins for rent.

The Park Service's consultants couldn't peer too far into the future based on their 2019 findings.

"Because of general uncertainty about life changes and other plans, approximately 17 percent of campers are uncertain about their future camping plans in 2019," the report's authors wrote. "This level of uncertainty makes it challenging to speculate if the retention rate is decreasing, holding steady, or continuing to grow."

How the Park Service goes about redesigning campgrounds for the 21st century is yet to be determined, but it doesn't need to address the current $350 million worth of maintenance backlog in the campgrounds before the redesign work, said Crandall.

"You don’t simply want to put money into restoring something to a 1960s' kind of a plan," he said. "I think it would be foolish for us to invest lots of money to restore exactly what we had when these campgrounds were first open. I think we can have very interesting accommodations that would depend upon the latest advances. Use our national park campgrounds as showcases for technology advancement, such as renewable energy and bathroom facilities that are at the highest level to minimize any impact on the water and the other aspects of the park environment.

"I think there are great opportunities to invest in, so I am not a big fan of simply saying, let’s lay out our blueprint from 1965 and rebuild these roads and we’ll rebuild these campsites according to those standards. I think we need to be looking forward, not just driving with our eyes focused on the rearview mirror.”

The Park Service's consultants did have one piece of advice for the agency when it hones in on that 21st century design: "Our national parks have long been a place for people to escape the real world and get lost in the majesty of nature. These natural resources are the demand generators that attract campers."

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