Yosemite National Park has begun leaving some entrance booths unstaffed for days on end, including weekends, as staffing shortages continue to squeeze the park’s front line operations. Signs at the booths now tell visitors: “Station closed. Pay when exiting park.”
The Big Oak Flat Entrance and Arch Rock Entrance have both been left without staff, and some visitors may be able to enter and leave without paying when the booths are closed. Yosemite employees said the signs are tied directly to the park’s broader staffing shortfall, with one worker saying permanent gate staff levels are now around or a little less than 50% of what they would be with a full roster.
The park has tried to steer visitors toward advance planning, posting a reminder on Instagram urging people to buy tickets before arriving. That advice reflects a larger problem inside the National Park Service, where employee losses and thin schedules have left some sites struggling to keep basic functions running. One employee said managers have had to stack schedules so quieter days are left unstaffed at certain entrances while enough workers are held back for weekends and busier periods.
The issue comes after years of mounting strain across the park service. In June 2025, the National Parks Conservation Association said the NPS had lost around 24% of its workforce since President Donald J. Trump took office, leaving the agency at its lowest staffing level in 20 years. Around 1,000 National Park Service employees were let go at the beginning of 2025, and the article says the downward trend in staffing has continued this year.
Elisabeth Barton said the park is struggling to support the number of visitors coming in and that she has trouble seeing the long game. Her warning lands at a moment when Yosemite’s staffing gap is no longer an internal problem but a visible one at the gate, where the park is effectively asking visitors to police themselves.
The friction is already showing elsewhere in the park. During the 2025 government shutdown, Yosemite’s staff shortages left rule-breakers to run wild, and the article says unruly behavior at the park has increased since the start of 2026. Employees also said possible budget cuts in 2027 are hanging over the park service, raising fresh concern that the same shortages now affecting entry booths could become harder to reverse.
For Yosemite, the immediate question is no longer whether the entrances can keep functioning. It is how long a national park built to handle crowds can keep operating when the people meant to manage those crowds are not there.
