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1908-1940
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Visitor Fees in the National Park System: A Legislative and Administrative History I. THE PATTERN IS SET, 1908-1940 |
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Broadening the Base, 1935-1940
This policy statement resulted in no practical change, either then or under the subsequent Roosevelt administration. On the contrary, Roosevelt's Bureau of the Budget in 1935 instructed the Service to develop a fee structure for all the national parks and the national monuments as well, the object being to make the National Park System more nearly self-sustaining. At a House Appropriations Committee hearing on April 2, 1937, the Service presented a proposed fee schedule encompassing several additional parks and Colorado and Petrified Forest national monuments. Auto permits at Glacier, Mesa Verde, and Mount Rainier were to go from $1 to $1.50; other fee areas would remain at $1 except for Yosemite and Yellowstone, which would stay at $2 and $3 respectively. More parks would levy charges for motorcycle permits, and many would charge parking fees. In places there would be fees for guide service. Miscellaneous charges included a registration fee for climbing Mount Rainier and ten cents for the elevator at the Statue of Liberty. Associate Director Arthur E. Demaray testified that auto permits would be required for travel on the Blue Ridge Parkway when that road was completed. [22]
Representative Jed Johnson of the committee, the second in a succession of Oklahomans (beginning with McKeown) who would take particular exception to park visitor fees, complained that the proposed and even the present charges were excessive. A reminder that they were lower than they had been more than a decade earlier failed to mollify him. A majority of the committee found the proposed schedule valid, however, and it was endorsed in the committee report. [23]
At this point Secretary of the Interior Harold L. Ickes backed off. A Government reorganization was in the works, and Ickes and Secretary of Agriculture Henry A. Wallace had designs on certain of each others' bureaus, notably the U.S. Forest Service and National Park Service. Ickes feared that increasing NPS fees would bring unfavorable publicity to his department and lead to unwanted comparisons with the Forest Service under his rival. "[T]he Forest Service, having no fees, would be able to play up enormously that advantage in connection with the apparent policy of the Forest Service to take over the national parks," suggested Representative James G. Scrugham of Nevada at a House Appropriations Committee hearing on January 24, 1938. Associate Director Demaray seconded Scrugham's analysis. [24]
At the same hearing, NPS Director Arno B. Cammerer took pains to make clear that auto permits were licenses for use of the park roads, not entrance permits; visitors entering on foot or by commercial transportation were not charged. "The license fee in each park is predicated upon the amount of road mileage we have in that park," said Cammerer. [25] Director Mather, it will be recalled, came to justify auto fees less in terms of road mileage than in terms of the improved campground facilities provided by the Service. With campground charges ruled out, Cammerer had to revert to road mileage as the rationale for the fees.
The Service did introduce two new fees on an experimental basis in 1938: a ten cent admission charge at Fort Marion (Castillo de San Marcos) National Monument and at Fort Pulaski National Monument. More than $7,000 was realized in six months from the Fort Marion fee. The experiment was considered successful, and with the reorganization that had stalled the general fee increase no longer pending, the new fee schedule--expanded to cover some areas not originally included--was implemented in 1939. [26]
"In making appropriations for the national parks Congress had in view the development of a system of fees which would help to support their cost," Secretary Ickes announced. "Also it is believed that those who actually visit the national parks and monuments should make small contributions to their upkeep for the services those visitors receive which are not received by other citizens who do not visit the parks that are available to them, but who contribute to the support of these parks." Not all accepted this logic. "It is indirect taxation in its most vicious form," said Thomas P. Henry, president of the American Automobile Association, in denouncing any and all Federal area fees. "Taxpayers are already paying for these attractions." Senator Robert P. Reynolds of North Carolina, especially concerned that a fee might eventually be charged at Great Smoky Mountains National Park, made a radio address on the subject and published it and other opposing reaction in the Congressional Record. [27]
In general, however, the public accepted the new charges. Testifying before the Interior subcommittee of the House Appropriations Committee on February 10, 1940, Associate Director Demaray reported a positive response to the ten cent admission charges at Fort Marion, Fort Pulaski, Fort McHenry, the Lincoln Museum (Ford's Theatre), and the House Where Lincoln Died:
The reaction has been very good. There has not been any particular objection to it, and most of our superintendents have found that it has been beneficial in keeping out idle local people, who just went out of curiosity. The other reaction is that the public is spending a little longer time. They happen to be more interested, having paid to enter. [28]
The decade of the 1930s thus ended with a broader application of visitor fees throughout the National Park System. The dollar amounts were extremely nominal; only in exceptional cases did a park's revenues equal or exceed its operational costs. (Yellowstone and Yosemite each turned a profit from visitor and concession fees combined in 1937, and the guide fees at Carlsbad Caverns customarily exceeded expenses there several times over.) [29] The new historical areas acquired during the decade, many of which contained structures and other features requiring costly restoration and maintenance, increased the servicewide disparity between income and outgo. Although few now paid even lip service to the vision of a self-supporting park system, there was general agreement on the concerned committees in Congress that park users should pay a greater share for the parks than the general taxpayer.
In one instance a specific exception to this concept was written into law. A 1938 enactment directed that at Mount Rushmore, "No charge shall ever be made for admission to the memorial grounds or for viewing the memorial." [30]
This was the first fee prohibition legislated for a particular park. It would not be the last.
End of Chapter 1
22U. S., Congress, House, Committee on Appropriations, Interior Department Appropriation Bill, 1937, Hearings, 74th Congress, 2d Session, 1935, p. 382; same for 1938, 75th Congress, 1st Session, 1937, pp. 493, 497.
23Interior Appropriation Hearings, 1938, p. 496; same for 1939, 75th Congress, 3d Session, 1938, p. 524.
24Interior Appropriation Hearings, 1939, p. 525.
26U.S., Congress, House, Committee on Appropriations, Interior Department Appropriation Bill for 1940, Hearings, 76th Congress, 1st Session, 1939, p. 700.
27Ickes and Henry statements cited by Reynolds Apr. 4, 1939, 84 Congressional Record Al287-89.
28U.S., Congress, House, Committee on Appropriations, Interior Department Appropriation Bill for 1941, Hearings, 76th Congress, 3d Session, 1940, p. 713.
29Annual Report of the Secretary of the Interior for the Fiscal Year Ending June 30, 1937 (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1937), p. 73.
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