If you’re looking to save a little money on your summer getaway, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar has come up with a perfect plan for you.
Entrance fees for the 147 national parks and monuments across the country, including popular favorites like Grand Canyon, Yosemite and Mount Rushmore, will be waived on the weekends of June 20-21, July 18-19 and Aug. 15-16.
If locals aren’t keen on traveling too far, Colorado is lucky enough to have four beautiful national parks to choose from: Black Canyon, Great Sand Dunes, Mesa Verde and Rocky Mountain National Park.
Like Coloradans, the majority of Americans live less than a day’s drive from a national park. Yet still too few of us take advantage of these majestic parks.
Considering how close and how moderately priced they are — with fees ranging from $3 to $25 — we hope this trend changes.
“National parks serve as powerful economic engines for local communities,” Salazar explained. “We hope that promoting visitation will give a small shot in the arm to businesses in the area.”
We agree. According to the National Park Service, more than 275 million people visited national parks last year, and that kind of tourism injects more than $10 billion into local economies. More than 200,000 jobs rely on tourism outside of the parks.
But we’re also concerned about years of insufficient federal funding that have left our national parks in desperate need of maintenance and structural improvements. Bridges, roads, historic buildings, visitor centers, restrooms, trails — and more — are in serious need of refurbishing and repair.
The cost of doing this is nearly $9 billion — and it grows by a rate of $700 million a year.
Now that Interior Secretary Salazar has provided Americans with the incentive to visit these parks, we trust that he will continue to turn his attention to the larger problems facing them.
With the amount of money being thrown around in Washington these days, we need to ensure that our greatest treasures get due consideration.
But for now, enjoy.
