Travelers expect to pack basics like sunscreen, water and hiking boots for trips to national parks. This summer, visitors may also want to bring a debit or credit card.
Dozens of the 424 sites within the National Park System no longer accept cash for entry. A handful of others are going cashless by June 1 and more may be coming.
“We are trying to watch where our visitor demand is, but we’re also trying to make smart operational decisions that allow us to keep as many dollars in our parks,” Justin Unger, National Park Service associate director for Business Services, told USA TODAY.
Here’s why accepting cash is costly for national parks.
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Why are national parks going cashless?
There are a number of reasons some parks stop accepting cash.
To start, Unger said in recent years the U.S. Treasury created policies to reduce the amount of cash and checks handled across the federal government and many banks stopped partnering with the Treasury in that process.
“The number of formal banks with relationships with the Treasury Department, where we could actually take cash, has really dried up especially in more rural or remote areas,” he said.
Couple that with the ongoing closure of brick and mortar banks, and many parks wind up having to take that cash even further to deposit, costing both time and money. Death Valley spent roughly $40,000 a year on processing and transporting cash, according to the park.
By going cashless, Unger said, “We’re not paying for armored car service. We don’t have to pay for an employee to be able to shuttle cash back and forth or to have our law enforcement officers doing that. Instead they get to focus on doing law enforcement, providing emergency services.”
Unger said visitor behavior has also played a role in the move to cashless.
“The amount of cash that we are actually being offered has significantly declined by tens of millions of dollars,” he said.
Increasing efficiency
Unger noted that in the past couple of years, national parks have streamlined their various point-of-sale systems down to one that allows them to expedite cashless transactions.
“Imagine a tablet and being able, when we have long queued lines, to swipe people’s cards as you walk down the line so that as people are approaching the entrance gate in very busy parks, they can keep moving through the entrance gate as fast as possible, making a better customer experience,” Unger said. “Nobody wants to sit in an hour-and-a-half-long line in order to get into a national park.”
Additionally he said some parks are experimenting with scan-and-go technology that would allow frequent visitors, like annual pass holders and locals, to get into parks even faster.
Beyond changing technology, visitor behavior and banking resources, Unger said, “There’s also just the reality of we are stewards of the taxpayers’ dollars, and we have to guard against both internal theft as well as external theft.” He noted there is a “very, very, very, very, very small” amount of internal theft, equivalent to less than 0.1% of total collections, “but it is something that we have to pay attention to.”
What forms of payment are accepted?
Visitors may pay entry fees by debit or credit card and in some cases, contactless options like Apple Pay.
”I think that those cashless options oftentimes are multiplying faster than what we can keep up with, and they do need to interface with our point-of-sale system,” Unger said.
“I think people should certainly not just assume everything works every place, and so they should certainly do a little due diligence and plan ahead.”
One way to do so would be to pre-purchase entrance passes on recreation.gov before even heading out.
What happens if you only brought cash to a cashless park?
Some parks have partnered with outside businesses in gateway communities that will sell park passes for cash.
If those aren’t available, Unger said, “We are still in the customer service business, and there are going to be a handful of times where we do allow our employees to use thought and discretion to make sure that somebody has the ability to access their parks, but we certainly don’t want to have that as the standard … We ask people to support our parks by making sure that they’re well prepared.”
Where does the money collected at national parks go?
Roughly 80% of entry fees stay in the park where they’re collected, while 20% goes to parks that don’t collect fees, according to the National Park Service.
Those are spent on a wide array of things that impact visitor experiences like maintaining facilities, restoring habitats and law enforcement for emergency operations.
“National parks are, at the end of the day, trying to make sure that we meet customers where they’re at and keep every dollar that we possibly can going back into the benefiting the visitor,” Unger said.
What national parks are going cashless in 2023?
Hawai’i Volcanoes National Park and Mount Rainier National Park will go cashless starting Friday.
Death Valley National Park and Rocky Mountain National Park will do the same on June 1.
Additionally, Harpers Ferry National Historical Park and Prince William Forest Park are currently piloting cashless programs that run into July.
It’s worth noting, only about a quarter of the 424 sites within the National Park System charge entrance fees and park managers decide whether their sites go cashless. Beyond iconic national parks like Acadia and Zion, the National Park System includes national battlefields, monuments, seashores and more.
Which national park sites are already cashless?
- Amistad National Recreation Area
- Badlands National Park
- Bandelier National Monument
- Bent’s Old Fort National Historic Site
- Big Bend National Park
- Bryce Canyon National Park
- Capulin Volcano National Monument
- Chaco Culture National Historical Park
- Crater Lake National Park
- Cumberland Island National Seashore
- Devils Tower National Monument
- Everglades National Park
- Fort McHenry National Monument and Historic Shrine
- Golden Spike National Historical Park
- Grand Canyon National Park
- Home of Franklin D. Roosevelt National Historic Site
- Isle Royale National Park
- Little Bighorn Battlefield National Monument
- Mesa Verde National Park
- Petrified Forest National Park
- Pipe Spring National Monument
- Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore
- Sunset Crater Volcano National Monument
- Thomas Edison National Historical Park
- Timpanogos Cave National Park
- Vicksburg National Military Park
- Wind Cave National Park
- Wright Brothers National Memorial
- Yosemite National Park
Some parks may revert to accepting cash or accepting it at specific locations or under certain circumstances. Details may be found on their respective websites.
