this post was submitted on 16 Nov 2024
445 points (94.1% liked)
Greentext
4490 readers
911 users here now
This is a place to share greentexts and witness the confounding life of Anon. If you're new to the Greentext community, think of it as a sort of zoo with Anon as the main attraction.
Be warned:
- Anon is often crazy.
- Anon is often depressed.
- Anon frequently shares thoughts that are immature, offensive, or incomprehensible.
If you find yourself getting angry (or god forbid, agreeing) with something Anon has said, you might be doing it wrong.
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Usually it's the federal park service (government agency) that runs the parks, and they're the ones that take payment. It's not for-profit, and the fees don't completely pay for maintenance of the park in most cases, they just offset the cost of so many people going (mostly tourists).
And there's usually only one or two roads going to the parks (Yellowstone has 3 IIRC), and they're usually really out of the way, so you're not going to be able to just walk there. Many parks don't connect the entrances either, so they're purely a destination. My brother lives right outside Glacier National Park, and it's still a good 20 miles from the "city" (Columbia Falls is ~5k people) to the park entrance (again, there are two, one at each end of the park).
Yes, these places are massive, but they're also really far from normal traffic, so you'd have go at least a half hour out of the way to get there (often multiple hours driving). Someone needs to pay for maintenance of the infrastructure to get there, and that's what these fees are for.
Sometimes it's as low as $2 or so, sometimes it's like $50 (for more popular parks). It gets adjusted to preserve access for those that really want to visit and prevent abuse. Sometimes it's just a suggested donation.