Key Takeaways
- •Yosemite eliminated its timed entry system for 2026 following a federal directive to keep parks open and accessible
- •Memorial Day weekend brought gridlock, overflowing parking lots, and hour-plus wait times at park entrances
- •Visitors who can't get in or can't park have to go somewhere. Private campgrounds near the park are that somewhere.
Yosemite had a reservation system. Then the federal government told it not to.
In February, Yosemite Superintendent Ray McPadden announced the park would drop its timed entry requirement for 2026, following a federal directive from Interior Secretary Doug Burgess ordering national parks to remain open and accessible. The decision ended a system that had been in place since 2020.
Memorial Day weekend was the first real test. It did not go well.
Long entrance lines. Parking lots full by mid-morning. Visitors waiting over an hour just to get inside the gates. Social media filled up with frustrated posts and photos of cars stacked down Highway 120. The park had already recorded roughly 90,000 more visitors in 2026 than at the same point in 2025, a 13% jump year over year. Peak summer hasn't started.
The Math for Private Operators
Here is what the coverage of this story has mostly missed: every visitor who can't park at Yosemite needs somewhere to stay.
Gateway communities around the park — El Portal, Groveland, Lee Vining, Mariposa — have private campgrounds and RV parks that sit within 30 to 60 minutes of the valley floor. When the park overflows, those operators absorb the spillover. It's what happened during the pandemic surge years, and the conditions driving it this summer are more extreme.
The NPS has acknowledged the situation. Its own guidance now encourages visitors to explore camping options outside Yosemite Valley. That is a federal agency actively redirecting its visitors toward private operators. It doesn't get much more direct than that.
The Broader Lesson
The Yosemite situation is the clearest example of a pattern that plays out at public lands across the country. When a national park, state forest, or recreation area gets busier, constrained, or harder to access, the private campgrounds around it benefit. Inventory inside the park is fixed. Demand is not.
If your park sits within an hour of a high-traffic public land, your proximity is a marketing asset you should be using. Not in a vague "near nature" sense. In a specific, direct sense: when the park is full, you're not. When reservations are impossible to get, your site is available tonight.
The Takeaway
Yosemite's experiment with open access is just getting started. Visitation is already up 13% and peak season hasn't arrived. The private campground operators near the park who position themselves as the overflow solution now, before July, will capture demand that has nowhere else to go. If you're near any national park running at capacity this summer, this is the moment to update your messaging, your listings, and your availability.
Sources: National Park Service / Deseret News / GearJunkie