The list of national parks in the United States requiring reservations for part of the year continues to grow.
The US National Park Service has announced that beginning in summer 2024, visitors to Yosemite National Park in California will need to reserve their space ahead of time before turning up at the park’s entrance gates. The Park Service says the move is necessary to address a growing problem of overcrowding.
NPS is calling it the “Peak Hours Plus” program, billing it as an expanded version of an experiment with partial reservations conducted at Yosemite in 2022. Dubbing it a “pilot system,” visitors to Yosemite National Park will need to secure advance reservations for their vehicles “on weekends from April 13 to June 30; every day from July 1 to Aug. 16; and on weekends from Aug. 17 to Oct. 27” from 5 am to 4 pm, NPS said in a release.
“This pilot system will inform how we ensure an equitable and outstanding visitor experience while protecting Yosemite’s world-class resources,” Yosemite National Park Superintendent Cicely Muldoon said in a statement.
The park will start managing reservation requests very early. The Park Service says it will begin taking online reservations for travelers to Yosemite beginning January 5, 2024.
Reservation systems throughout the US national park system appear to be expanding as the nation’s population swells and as social media draws more and more visitors to “America’s cathedrals.”
“Timed entry” permits are now required to travel during peak summer demand periods to Rocky Mountain National Park in Colorado, Arches National Park in Utah, and Glacier National Park in Montana. Yosemite in California now joins this growing list.
NPS also now requires campers to purchase permits to camp overnight in the backcountry of Shenandoah National Park in Virginia.
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Park Info
Park Name:
Yosemite National Park
Location:
California, United States
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