Waterfalls are raging. The view are magnificent. Bears will come out of hibernation soon. Spring is just around the corner in Yosemite National Park.
But one thing is different this year: Uncertainty. Lots of it. With only two months until the peak visitor season begins at one of America’s most popular national parks, the Trump administration has not announced whether visitors will be required to have reservations to enter the park, creating confusion.
Last year, in an attempt to cut down on traffic gridlock and overcrowding during busy summer weekends, Yosemite officials required that visitors obtain an entrance reservation for their vehicles between April and October. A similar system was in place from 2020 to 2022 during the COVID pandemic.
Environmentalists generally praised the system. Some businesses opposed it.
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But now the Trump administration isn’t telling park officials whether or not to put it in place again this summer. Travelers from around the world and the nation are calling hotels in gateway communities, saying they aren’t sure they want to book a vacation if they don’t know whether they will be able to get into the park.
“It’s difficult. Nobody knows,” said Jessie Fischer, whose family owns Yosemite View Lodge and Cedar Lodge Yosemite, on the park’s western edges. “We all wish we could give our travelers peace of mind. We know how difficult it is to plan a trip. If people were planning to go to Disneyland, and they didn’t know if they could get in, not many people would go.”
Park officials aren’t talking. They are awaiting word from Washington D.C. as public questions roll in. Yosemite Superintendent Cicely Muldoon retired in February and hasn’t been replaced.
The park’s website says: “Yosemite National Park anticipates sharing details about this year’s reservation system early in 2025. We recognize the importance of providing clarity on that system as soon as possible to accommodate peak summer season travel planning.”
U.S. Sen. Alex Padilla, D-California, sent a letter Tuesday to Interior Secretary Doug Burgum asking for a decision, and urging him to continue last summer’s system.
“The uncertainty surrounding the plan’s approval is directly affecting visitors who are trying to make their summer plans now, as well as gateway businesses who depend on summer tourism to survive,” Padilla wrote.
On Friday Padilla’s staff said he hadn’t received a reply.
Asked about the letter and the Trump administration’s summer plans for Yosemite, Jennifer Peace, a spokeswoman for the Department of Interior said via email: “While we do not comment on congressional correspondence, the Department of the Interior takes all correspondence from Congress seriously and carefully reviews each matter. Should there be any updates on this topic, we will provide further information at the appropriate time.”
She did not respond to additional questions.
Rep. Tom McClintock, R-Modesto, whose district includes Yosemite, said he has asked Trump officials not to impose a reservation system this year.
“I expressed my opposition to continuing the reservation system to the administration last month,” McClintock said. “And the sooner it is scrapped, the better.”
McClintock has been a longtime opponent of entrance reservations at Yosemite.
“It might be convenient for the park staff to discourage visitors,” he said. “But it is devastating to the surrounding gateway communities that rely on tourism for their livelihoods. I am confident that new management at the park will adopt a more visitor-friendly attitude.”
Last year, visitors from April to October who didn’t have reservations at a campground or hotel in the park were required to book a reservation for their vehicle on recreation.gov. If visitors came before 5 a.m. or after 4 p.m., they didn’t need one.
Yosemite dropped reservations in 2023. The park reported waits of 2 hours or longer to get in on busy summer weekends with traffic jams and full parking lots.
“With reservations, you can still welcome the same amount of people, but with the certainty of getting in — without getting stuck in traffic for hours and having overcrowded facilities,” said Neal Desai, regional director of the National Parks Conservation Association, an environmental group. “It basic. You are spreading people out throughout the day, and the week and the month during the busy season.”
Desai noted that 4.1 million people visited Yosemite last year, up slightly from 3.8 million in 2023 when there wasn’t a day-use reservation system.
Last month, the Trump administration fired roughly 1,000 of the National Park Service’s 20,000 employees, including 10 at Yosemite, to cut costs. The park was slow to hire summer seasonal workers due to a hiring freeze Trump imposed after taking office. On Friday, Yosemite announced more summer campground reservations will be offered for sale after recent delays.
Several other big national parks are using a day-use reservation system this summer, including Rocky Mountain in Colorado, Arches in Utah and Glacier in Montana. National parks officials approved those plans before Trump took office.
In Yosemite, park planners held public meetings and drew up hundreds of pages of plans. They completed the process in August and sent the materials to national parks leaders in Washington for final approval. But the plans were never acted on before President Biden’s term expired in January.
Some local residents say at this point, they just want clarity one way or the other.
“Bookings are down. People don’t know,” Mariposa County Supervisor Rosemarie Smallcombe. “You have a spouse and two kids and you are trying to plan your vacation. Is there going to be a reservation system? How do I make a reservation? It’s creating a lot of uncertainty, which is having implications for our tourism economy.”
