Glacier National Park's popular Going-to-the-Sun Road is already closed for the 2025 season between Avalanche Creek and Logan Pass.
The sun sets on America's most visited national park, Great Smoky Mountains.
Watched and photographed by human visitors, a resident bull moose walks through Sprague Lake in Rocky Mountain National Park on Sept. 15, 2025.

There’s a small eatery a few minutes outside the West Entrance of Glacier National Park. Every morning at 7 a.m., without fail, workers arrive at Park Provisions to prepare sandwiches and other fresh to-go food for the day ahead. Since the Oct. 1 government shutdown, the ding of the doorbell has quieted. Stacey Schnebel, the owner of Park Provisions and Stonefly Lounge, watched traffic dwindle from the market’s windows.

“Starting the first week of the shutdown, it was tumbleweed,” Schnebel told USA TODAY. Glacier’s busy season winds down this time of year, but compared with the week prior, gross sales at Park Provisions dropped by 38.5%.

“We've lived through shutdowns before, but my business depends on those people who are furloughed and may or may not be receiving their backpay when they go back to work,” Schnebel said.

Businesses like this in Coram, Montana, and across the country are feeling the effects of the parks’ disruption. For context, areas managed by the National Park Service received a record-breaking 332 million visitations last year.

The National Parks Conservation Association, a nonprofit dedicated to protecting the parks “on the ground, in the courtroom or on Capitol Hill,” now estimates gateway communities risk losing up to $80 million in visitor spending each day during the shutdown on things like hotels, restaurants, shopping, gear rentals and more. And those aren’t the only tolls on the parks and their communities.

Visiting national parks during the shutdown

National parks largely remain open with reduced staffing.

“More than 350 of our national park units are open in some capacity,” a National Park Service spokesperson said in a statement. “That includes many of the most visited sites across the country. Each park’s status is determined by its contingency plan and local conditions, but we’re doing everything possible to keep America’s parks accessible and safe for visitors.”

Some park advocates and former National Park Service employees, however, would prefer parks to be closed.

“National parks are not designed to operate with so minimal staffing,” said Jeff Mow, a past superintendent of Glacier, Denali and Kenai Fjords in Alaska. He still lives near Glacier and was one of 40 retired National Park Service superintendents to sign the Coalition to Protect America’s National Parks’ open letter to Interior Secretary Doug Burgum, calling for parks to fully shutter during the shutdown. The Coalition is composed of current, former and retired National Park Service employees and volunteers.

“We have seen the impacts from past shutdowns, whether it’s resources being impacted, illegal camping, people bringing dogs into the park where they’re not supposed to be, people going past closed signs, poaching, vandalism, all those things,” Mow said. He noted that park employees already had a lot on their plate, having been understaffed even before the shutdown from the Trump administration's federal worker reductions and hiring freeze. They will have a lot to catch up on when they get back, Mow said, including time-sensitive work like combatting invasive species.

Fewer rangers means less "preventative search and rescue,” said John Garder, senior director for budget and appropriations at the National Parks Conservation Association. He said that includes making sure visitors aren’t going on hikes they aren’t prepared for and understanding how to behave around large and dangerous wildlife.

"If you want to go to your park, we understand that, but you could be putting your safety at risk, and could be putting resources at risk," Garder added. "The more visitors go, the more challenging it is for park personnel to try to keep some order in a very inherently disorderly situation."

There have already been reports of squatters and rule breaking at Yosemite National Park in California, but the National Park Service says “law enforcement rangers and campground personnel continue to monitor visitor use, respond to incidents, and enforce park regulations.”

Charles Winstead of the San Francisco Bay Area has seen several climbing accidents while climbing El Capitan over the past few weeks and attests to the quick responses from park personnel. “They're the best in the world at what they do.”

Winstead began his ascent before the government shutdown. From high up on the wall, he said, “The most obvious, visible thing that we've seen is just a real uptick in the BASE jumpers.“

BASE jumping is illegal across national parks, and the National Park Service has told USA TODAY it’s investigating reports of it at Yosemite and also removed unauthorized campsites.

Jose Garcia of Houston was surprised by how open Yellowstone National Park was when he and his wife visited the week of Oct. 8, after planning their trip since spring.

“The shutdown caught us off guard, but we weren’t too concerned,” he said. “I mean, we visited national parks during COVID. We went to Big Bend and there was really nobody at the entrances there, so we were like, ‘We'll probably get in free,’ which actually, that's what happened at Yellowstone, except there was rangers there. ... They were handing out maps and answering questions, the normal stuff, except collecting (entrance fees).”

Garcia said restrooms were open throughout the park, which spans parts of Montana, Wyoming and Idaho, the visitors center and shop by Old Faithful were open, and park staff helped direct traffic during an elk crossing near Mammoth Hot Springs.

“There was nothing shut down that we could see,” he said.

Filling in the gaps

Perrin Doniger, vice president of Communications and Marketing for Friends of Acadia, says lost revenue is a big concern for Acadia National Park in Maine, which is especially busy now because of the fall foliage.

“Typically, the park makes about $1.5 million in entrance fee funds in the month of October,” she said. “And so, all of that revenue is at risk.”

To offset lost revenue, Friends of Acadia, the nonprofit dedicated to preserving and protecting Acadia, is spearheading a voluntary donation program, where visitors can contribute what they would have paid for entrance to a fund earmarked for the park.

Garder worries about the dollars that aren’t coming in at all if travelers decide to skip national parks during the shutdown. According to his estimates, busy gateway communities like those around Acadia, Great Smoky Mountains, Grand Canyon and Zion could lose millions each day.

Great Smoky Mountains National Park has been able to stay fully open, at least temporarily, after state and local leaders stepped in with funding. The park straddling North Carolina and Tennessee is by far the nation’s most visited national park. In October 2024, it averaged nearly 49,000 daily visitors.

In Colorado, the state’s four national parks were directed by Gov. Jared Polis to keep operating with fee revenue until it runs out, according to a press release.

Rocky Mountain National Park typically enacts a timed-entry system to manage the crowds until mid-October. Now, the restrictions have been lifted, and the gates are open.

Since the shutdown, the YMCA of the Rockies, located in neighboring Estes Park, has led four trash pick-up volunteer events.

“We remember the impact that the last government shutdown in 2018 had on the national parks. It was all over the news,” said Jason Nelson, the marketing and communications director at YMCA of the Rockies. “We set this up in anticipation of similar traffic levels and similar impact to the park.”

While the visitor centers inside the park are closed, the Fall River Visitor Center, which is right outside, is open without rangers. The Rocky Mountain Conservancy, the park’s official nonprofit partner, has a store inside where they sell educational items like books and maps. Since the shutdown, they’ve brought in additional people to answer questions and give out park passport stamps.

“Keep in mind, these folks are not park rangers, so they're doing the best that they can, but they don't have the same training or educational background as a park ranger would,” said Kaci Yoh, the communications manager at Rocky Mountain Conservancy.

As the park transitions from fall to winter, when conditions can quickly change, their staff is doing the best they can to help people recreate responsibly and safely in the park.

Back in Montana, Schnebel had been working every day for multiple shifts to keep Park Provisions open until she was able to fully staff it right before the shutdown. Now, she is thinking about how to best manage the cash from the summer.

“It's hard to make commitments to big advertising and marketing spending if you don't know if your coffers will refill after you make those investments,” Schnebel said. “It's hard to turn your liquid cash into merchandise for your store if nobody is going to come and buy your merchandise.”

Contributing: Melina Khan, USA TODAY; Joanna Hayes, Knoxville News Sentinel

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: National park communities may lose millions each day during the shutdown

Reporting by Ignacio Calderon and Eve Chen, USA TODAY / USA TODAY

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