Staying Away

Yosemite National Park this year will record its lowest number of visitors since 1990.

by Mark Grossi
Fresno Bee - December 31, 2002

Sixty lightning fires drove 10,000 visitors out of Yosemite Valley in August 1990. Many thousands more avoided Yosemite National Park for weeks after the smoky valley reopened 10 days later.
That year was the last time Yosemite counted fewer than 3.5 million visitors.

Yet, with no wildfires threatening anybody this year, the park is poised to record its lowest visitor total since then -- about 3.4 million.

That's a decrease of about 750,000 since 1996, a downward trend repeating itself for each of the past six years. The Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on New York City and the Pentagon are blamed for holding down the number of international visitors this year.

But, no matter what the reason, the six-year trend greets incoming Superintendent Michael Tollefson, scheduled to arrive in a few days.

Critics may ask him to consider revising the Yosemite Valley management plan, which could rely on buses to shuttle many visitors into the valley in an effort to reduce the number of vehicles.

Critics questioned whether more buses really were necessary. Now, with the visitor slump and a new superintendent, they have more reason to challenge the idea.

"How can you justify those buses?" asked Jeanne Aceto, who lives near the park boundary. "We never established the carrying capacity of the valley to begin with. The premise of the plan is faulty. With this reduction in visitors, I hope we can try to get this right now."

Yosemite officials don't think the decline affects the plan, which has been many years in the making and has gained federal approval.

"Whether it's 3.5 million or 4 million, it doesn't make a major difference," said spokesman Scott Gediman. "You're still talking about a lot of people. When does Yosemite Valley get too crowded? When the traffic is wall-to-wall."

Some estimates show the valley holds as many as 20,000 or 25,000 people on a busy summer holiday, but federal officials have long maintained it is too difficult to peg visitor limits. Some people stay for two days, others stay a few hours and leave. Some pass through without stopping.

Millions annually come to the valley for convenient, breathtaking views of the granite sights, such as El Capitan and Half Dome. The valley also is a crossroads for main Yosemite traffic arteries.

As visitor numbers grew in the 1980s and early 1990s, the National Park Service struggled with protecting meadows and other natural features while allowing as many people as possible to experience the park.

That struggle loaded layers of politics into the 1-mile-wide, 7-mile-long valley, which is only a tiny part of the 750,000-acre park. Preservationists pursued more protection while politicians and many in business communities, which depend on tourist trade just outside the park, argued against limits on the public.

The politics did not slow the stream of Yosemite visitors.

By the mid-1990s, park officials began periodically closing the gates when rangers determined traffic had come to a standstill in the valley. At one point, officials considered reservations for daytime-only visitors.

But that was 1996, when Yosemite peaked at 4.19 million visitors. Everything changed in January 1997.

A tropical storm dumped several inches of rain on an unusually large snowpack, which melted and filled the valley with a 100-year flood. The rising Merced River ripped out campgrounds, sewage systems and motel units. The park closed for weeks, and visitorship dipped by about 300,000 for the year.

Yosemite's entrance fee quadrupled from $5 to $20 in 1997, which officials believe caused a downturn in visitors. Two years later, the horrific Stayner murders again made Yosemite seem like a scary place to go.

Now, visitorship is down in other national parks, including Grand Canyon and Yellowstone, because of the Sept. 11 tragedy 15 months ago. Gediman said he has noticed a slump in foreign tourism.

"There's a downturn in international recreation," he said. "Our core visitorship is still coming. About 70% of the people are repeat visitors."

People in the gateway communities, such as Oakhurst, said the visitor slump is noticeable.

"We've had a moderate season," said Dan Carter, executive director of the Yosemite-Sierra Visitor's Bureau in Oakhurst. "We're not in as bad shape as the urban centers after 9/11. But the reduction in park visitors is definitely being reflected here."

At Midpines, along Highway 140, Maureen Quintal said her "Kampgrounds of America," or KOA, sites were full all summer, despite a significant reduction in European customers.

She said she was surprised visitors from within the United States more than made up for the loss.

"The store and gift shop sales were down," she said. "It looks like people are still coming here, but maybe they aren't spending as much.

"We're going to watch our inventory in the store next year and play it a little more conservatively."