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It could soon cost a lot more to visit the Grand Canyon or go hiking in Yellowstone or camping in Joshua Tree national parks. The National Park Service, under President Donald Trump's Interior Secretary, Ryan Zinke, is proposing a significant increase to entry fees at 17 of the country’s most popular national parks.
The Park Service says that the money collected from its proposed price hike would be used to address maintenance concerns and “make improvements to the aging infrastructure of national parks,” but it could also make certain sites prohibitively expensive for some families to visit, according to journalist Ruth Tam. She spent her childhood vacations taking road trips across the U.S. and stopping at national parks along the way. Tam’s father, a Chinese-American immigrant who moved to the U.S. back in 1968, saw the parks as window into his new country and its history.
Tam, a writer and public radio producer at WAMU’s The Kojo Nnamdi show, recently wrote about how the proposed national park price increases could impact families like hers for The Washington Post, and shares her story with The Takeaway.
The public comment period on the National Park Service's proposed fee increases is open until December 22nd.
