The alphabet soup of park fees

Thursday, Oct. 27, 2005 | 9:19 a.m.

Although Boulder City resident Richard Assalone has a $50 annual pass to enter any National Park Service area in the country, he has to pay an extra fee if he wants to go to the Red Rock Canyon National Conservation Area.

That's because the Bureau of Land Management supervises the Red Rock Canyon area.

The Park Service and other federal agencies, such as the BLM and the U.S. Forest Service, are working together to promote a national entrance card good for any federal park, forest, monument, battlefield, river or historical site across the nation, said Terry Baldino, spokesman for the Park Service at Death Valley National Park.

But the earliest a national entrance card could be approved by Congress is 2007, Baldino said.

In the meantime, visitors to national parks and conservation areas in the region will have to deal with the variety of fees charged.

Lake Mead National Recreation Area visitors will not see a fee increase in 2006 or 2007, said Roxanne Dey, spokeswoman for the Park Service at Lake Mead.

But at Death Valley, the Park Service is set to double the entry fee and annual pass. A carload of visitors pays $10 today. On Jan. 1 that single pass fee is to be $20. The annual pass for Death Valley, which costs $20 now, will rise to $40 on Jan. 1, Baldino said.

The fees at Death Valley have not increased since 1997, Baldino said.

And on the plus side, under legislation signed by President Bush in December, 80 cents of every $1 received by the Park Service is returned to Death Valley to maintain the park, he said.

Visitor fees have already helped the Park Service rehabilitate the historic Harmony Borax Works site and the 1930s Conservation Corps campground and build a new day-use area at Badwater, the lowest point in North America.

Future projects include reconstructing the cook house at Scotty's Castle, which was destroyed in a fire in the early 1990s, a new visitor use and parking area at Mesquite Flats sand dunes near Stovepipe Wells and designing and installing park information signs to help park visitors interpret natural and cultural resources within Death Valley.

The public can comment on the fee hike by e-mailing to deva***superintendent@nps.gov. or by writing to: Superintendent, Death Valley National Park, P.O. Box579, Death Valley, CA, 92328.

The fee increase doesn't bother Assalone because on his visits to Death Valley, Assalone did not see any place to collect fees.

"Where's the toll booths?" Assalone said. "They must be losing a lot of fees."

There are several reasons that there are no toll collectors on State Route 190 leading from Pahrump on the Nevada side into the park in California, Baldino said.

The Park Service believes that it is unsafe to put a human in a booth in such a remote part of the park. That particular section is 120 miles long. Most importantly, there's no power supply along the route, so there's no way to plug in air conditioning when summer temperatures reach 120 degrees, he said.

But even if the Park Service wanted to put toll booths along State Route 190, it would have to fight California to do so. California repaired State Route 190 in the 1940s after flash floods ripped out the roadway, and the Park Service has agreed to let the state maintain the pavement but does not want toll booths on the route, Baldino said.

Instead, the Park Service had a contractor install six automatic toll booths along State Route 190 and six other collection machines in Death Valley campgrounds.

"We're depending a lot on the honor system here," Baldino said.

Park visitors can also pay at Furnace Creek Visitors Center, a ranger station at Stovepipe Wells, Scotty's Castle and in Beatty, he said.

Mary Manning may be reached at 259-4065 or at manning@lasvegassun.com.

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