Yosemite National Park, CA, is proposing a fee increase for overnight camping to enable the park to keep up with the rising costs of campground operations. Increased revenue from campground fees will enable the park to better maintain facilities, enhance visitor services, and provide for better resource protection. These proposed fee increases are consistent with other public and private campgrounds within the greater Sierra Nevada region.
Eighty percent of the campground fees collected in Yosemite are retained by the park. The additional revenue collected will support current and future maintenance and renovation projects, which include:
- Upgrades to restroom and shower facilities at Camp 4 Campground
- Improvements and maintenance of all park campgrounds
- Restoration of native plants at popular natural and cultural resource sites
- Rehabilitation of vault toilet facilities parkwide
- Repair and replacement of signs throughout Yosemite National Park
Additionally, fee revenue helps to maintain critical supplies of park brochures and materials, provide Ranger-guided educational programming, and provide for additional staffing at high-visitation areas to assist with responding to emergencies and supplying visitors with safety information.
The campgrounds included in this proposal are extremely popular and enjoyed by thousands of park visitors each year. These proposed fee increases would make the park’s campground fees consistent with other public and private camping facilities.
The proposed fee changes are listed below:
- Camp 4 Campground
- 2020 fee: $6.00 per person | 2021 proposed fee: $10.00 per person
- Family Sites in Reservation Campgrounds (this includes Upper, Lower, North Pines, Wawona, Bridalveil Creek, Crane Flat, Hodgdon Meadow and Tuolumne Meadows Campgrounds)
- 2020 fee: $26.00 per site | 2021 proposed fee: $36.00 per site
- Family Site Campgrounds when First-Come, First-Served (this includes Wawona and Hodgdon Meadow during the Winter Season and White Wolf)
- 2020 fee: $18.00 per site | 2021 proposed fee: $26.00 per site
- Primitive, First-Come, First-Served Campgrounds (this includes Tamarack Flat, Yosemite Creek, and Porcupine Flat)
- 2020 fee: $12.00 per site | 2021 proposed fee: $20.00 per site
- Group Campsites (30-person occupancy)
- 2020 fee: $50.00 per site | 2021 proposed fee: $75.00 per site
- Stock Campsites (these sites are located at Wawona, Bridalveil Creek, and Tuolumne Meadows Campgrounds)
- 2020 fee: $30.00 per site | 2021 proposed fee: $50.00 per site
- Double Sites (12-person occupancy)
- 2020 fee: $36.00 per site | 2021 proposed fee: $60.00 per site
- Backpacker Sites
- 2020 fee: $6.00 per site | 2021 proposed fee: $8.00 per site
Yosemite National Park is accepting public comments on the proposed fee increases through July 10, 2021. Comments can be submitted via email. These proposed fee increases are slated to take effect in October 2021.
Yosemite National Park is an American national park located in the western Sierra Nevada of Central California, bounded on the southeast by Sierra National Forest and on the northwest by Stanislaus National Forest. The park is managed by the National Park Service and covers an area of 748,436 acres (1,169 sq mi; 3,029 km2) and sits in four counties: centered in Tuolumne and Mariposa, extending north and east to Mono and south to Madera County. Designated a World Heritage Site in 1984, Yosemite is internationally recognized for its granite cliffs, waterfalls, clear streams, giant sequoia groves, lakes, mountains, meadows, glaciers, and biological diversity. Almost 95% of the park is designated wilderness.
On average, about four million people visit Yosemite each year, and most spend the majority of their time in the seven square miles (18 km2) of Yosemite Valley. The park set a visitation record in 2016, surpassing five million visitors for the first time in its history. Yosemite was central to the development of the national park idea. Galen Clark and others lobbied to protect Yosemite Valley from development, ultimately leading to President Abraham Lincoln’s signing the Yosemite Grant in 1864. John Muir led a successful movement to have Congress establish a larger national park by 1890, one which encompassed the valley and its surrounding mountains and forests, paving the way for the National Park System.
Bring Grizzly’s back to Yosemite.