Rocky Mountain, Death Valley: What to know as more national parks go cashless

Travelers expect to pack basics like sunscreen, water and hiking boots for trips to national parks. This summer, visitors may also want to bring a debit or credit card.

Dozens of the 424 sites within the National Park System no longer accept cash for entry. A handful of others have just gone cashless and more may be coming.

“We are trying to watch where our visitor demand is, but we're also trying to make smart operational decisions that allow us to keep as many dollars in our parks,” Justin Unger, National Park Service associate director for Business Services, told USA TODAY.

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What national parks are going cashless in 2023?

Death Valley National Park and Rocky Mountain National Park went cashless on June 1, just days after Hawai'i Volcanoes National Park and Mount Rainier National Park.

Additionally, Harpers Ferry National Historical Park and Prince William Forest Park are currently piloting cashless programs that run into July.

It’s worth noting, only about a quarter of the 424 sites within the National Park System charge entrance fees and park managers decide whether their sites go cashless. Beyond iconic national parks like Acadia and Zion, the National Park System includes national battlefields, monuments, seashores and more.

Why are national parks going cashless?

Harper's Ferry National Historical Park is currently piloting a cashless program, but even parks that aren't cashless often prefer cashless payments.

There are a number of reasons some parks stop accepting cash.

To start, Unger said in recent years the U.S. Treasury created policies to reduce the amount of cash and checks handled across the federal government and many banks stopped partnering with the Treasury in that process.

“The number of formal banks with relationships with the Treasury Department, where we could actually take cash, has really dried up especially in more rural or remote areas,” he said.

Couple that with the ongoing closure of brick and mortar banks, and many parks wind up having to take that cash even further to deposit, costing both time and money. Death Valley spent roughly $40,000 a year on processing and transporting cash, according to the park.

By going cashless, Unger said, “We're not paying for armored car service. We don't have to pay for an employee to be able to shuttle cash back and forth or to have our law enforcement officers doing that. Instead they get to focus on doing law enforcement, providing emergency services.”

Other factors

Unger said visitor behavior has also played a role in the move to cashless. “The amount of cash that we are actually being offered has significantly declined by tens of millions of dollars," he said.

Cashless transactions can also be processed quicker now that national parks have streamlined their various point-of-sale systems down to one system.

“Imagine a tablet and being able, when we have long queued lines, to swipe people's cards as you walk down the line so that as people are approaching the entrance gate in very busy parks, they can keep moving through the entrance gate as fast as possible, making a better customer experience,” Unger said.

Cashless transactions can also help parks protect their dollars from internal and external theft. Unger noted there is a “very, very, very, very, very small” amount of internal theft, equivalent to less than 0.1% of total collections, but "it is something that we have to pay attention to.”

What forms of payment are accepted?

Visitors may pay entry fees by debit or credit card and in some cases, contactless options like Apple Pay.

”I think that those cashless options oftentimes are multiplying faster than what we can keep up with, and they do need to interface with our point-of-sale system,” Unger said.

“I think people should certainly not just assume everything works every place, and so they should certainly do a little due diligence and plan ahead.”

One way to do so would be to pre-purchase entrance passes on recreation.gov before even heading out.

Several dozen sites within the National Park System have gone cashless.

What happens if you only brought cash to a cashless park?

Some parks have partnered with outside businesses in gateway communities that will sell park passes for cash.

If those aren’t available, Unger said, “We are still in the customer service business, and there are going to be a handful of times where we do allow our employees to use thought and discretion to make sure that somebody has the ability to access their parks, but we certainly don't want to have that as the standard … We ask people to support our parks by making sure that they're well prepared.”

Where does the money collected at national parks go?

Roughly 80% of entry fees stay in the park where they’re collected, while 20% goes to parks that don’t collect fees, according to the National Park Service.

Those are spent on a wide array of things that impact visitor experiences like maintaining facilities, restoring habitats and law enforcement for emergency operations.

“National parks are, at the end of the day, trying to make sure that we meet customers where they're at and keep every dollar that we possibly can going back into the benefiting the visitor,” Unger said.

Some parks may revert to accepting cash or accepting it at specific locations or under certain circumstances. Details may be found on their respective websites.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Are US national parks going cashless? Rocky Mountain, Death Valley are