Entrance fees at Grand Canyon National Park would increase to $30 per person and $70 per vehicle during peak season under a new National Park Service proposal.
The park is one of 17 Park Service sites targeted by the proposal, which is up for public comment until November 23. The higher fees would apply May through September, the months when the park sees the most visitors. The fee for motorcyclists would be $50.
The 17 sites bring in 70 percent of the Park Service's entrance-fee revenue, the agency says. In addition to the peak-season increases, the proposal would hike the fee for an annual pass at each park to $75; at Grand Canyon, that's an increase from the current $60 fee. The fee for an annual pass to all Park Service sites, though, would remain $80.
The Park Service says the proposed increase would generate an additional $70 million annually, and that the additional funds would be spent on park projects and activities, with an emphasis on deferred maintenance. That could be good news for the Trans-Canyon Pipeline, the aging waterway that supplies the Grand Canyon's South Rim; we featured the pipeline in a recent issue of Arizona Highways.
Grand Canyon is the only Arizona park on the list, but others in the region include Zion, Bryce Canyon, Canyonlands and Arches national parks in Utah; Yosemite, Sequoia and Kings Canyon, and Joshua Tree national parks in California; and Rocky Mountain National Park in Colorado. The peak seasons for those parks are all the same as Grand Canyon's, with the exception of Joshua Tree (January through May) and Rocky Mountain (June through October).
If you'd like to weigh in on this proposal, please do so by November 23.