After months of delays and confusion, the Trump administration has finally announced that visitors will be required to have reservations to enter Yosemite National Park this summer, although on fewer days than last year.
Late Tuesday, Yosemite officials posted new information on the park’s website stating that in an effort to reduce crowds during some of the busiest times of the year, visitors who plan to travel to the famed Sierra Nevada park between 6 a.m. and 2 p.m. on Memorial Day weekend, or any day between June 15 and August 15, or over Labor Day weekend will need to make a reservation beforehand to get in.
“This system ensures all visitors, whether they plan in advance or decide last minute, can experience the park each day,” the notice stated. “It also spreads visitation across the day so that visitors have a better experience.”
Reservations for all dates will be released on Recreation.gov at 8 a.m. PDT on May 6.
Additional reservations will be available seven days before the arrival date (for example, a reservation for an arrival date of August 31 can be made on August 24) at 8 a.m. Pacific time on Recreation.gov.
The non-refundable reservation fee is $2, which does not include the $35-per-car park entrance fee.
There are exceptions: Visitors who arrive before 6 a.m. or after 2 p.m. do not need a reservation to get into the park. Nor do visitors who have overnight reservations at hotels inside the park, such as the Ahwahnee or Yosemite Valley Lodge, or at campsites inside the park.
Also, people who enter the park on a Yosemite Area Regional Transportation System (YARTS) bus, or on a tour bus do not need reservations to enter for the day.
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.
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.
Last year, Yosemite officials drew up plans to continue the reservation system this year, but the Biden administration did not finalize them before President Biden left office on Jan. 20. After President Trump took office, the Department of Interior, the National Park Service, and Yosemite officials did not say for more than three months whether reservations would be required.
As a result, travelers from around the world and across the nation have been calling hotels in Mariposa, Groveland, and other 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. Bookings are down and business is suffering, hotel owners report.
Tuesday night, with the start of the peak summer tourist season less than a month away, business leaders said the last-minute nature of the decision has created new problems.
“We’re surprised by the late announcement,” said Jonathan Farrington, executive director of the Yosemite Mariposa County Tourism Bureau. “Our concern is that thousands of daily arrivals to Yosemite will be delayed at the entrance stations as people arrive, unaware of the required vehicle reservation.”
Farrington noted that many visitors who make hotel reservations can’t be notified of the park’s new entrance rules by the hotels, because large numbers of reservations are made internationally through travel companies or completed at online travel portals like Expedia. With those reservations, the hotel, motel or vacation rental owners are not provided the email addresses or contact details for the guests, he said.
Last year, roughly 700 cars a day on busy days arrived at the park without a day use reservation and had to wait for hours to get in, Farrington said.
“With this late notice, the numbers could be doubled,” he said. “This is going to be a difficult summer for visitors, Yosemite staff and the surrounding communities.”
Environmental groups said the Trump administration should have simply continued the reservation system from last year.
“If the administration truly cared about the visitor experience at Yosemite this summer, it would have allowed park leaders to move forward months ago with its preferred reservation system, which was refined over the past several years, and led by data, deep community engagement, and commonsense,” said Mark Rose, Sierra Nevada program manager with the National Parks Conservation Association in Sacramento.
Part of the delay this year came after Rep. Tom McClintock, R-Modesto, a longtime opponent of national park reservations whose district includes Yosemite, asked Trump officials to block it.
“The National Park Service was about to go ahead and re-impose that reservation system,” McClintock said on March 28 in a speech at the Tuolumne County Business Council luncheon. “I raised hell with the White House, and they are now backing off, at least for the moment. I’ve also told them, though, that the worst thing is also delay. People have got to know whether or not they are going to need to make reservations, so we need to make this decision now.”
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.
Rose noted 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.
“Smart planning doesn’t mean fewer people,” he said. “Just a better experience for all.”
