National Park

National Parks Week begins this weekend, kicking off with free entry to all parks on Saturday, April 19 — just weeks after mass layoffs and court-ordered reinstatements of some park workers.

For example, Utah’s Zion National Park has four days annually on average above 92.4 degrees – its 99th percentile temperature. That could jump to 21 days, or even higher.

Interior Secretary Doug Burgum last week ordered all national parks to “remain open and accessible.” The directive comes after about 1,000 National Park Service employees were fired. In March, a federal judge ordered them – and thousands of other laid-off federal workers – to be reinstated, but the U.S. Supreme Court recently blocked that order.

Note: This is an encore edition of Reader's Corner. The episode originally aired in November 2022.An interview with Nate Schweber, author of the new book, This America of Ours: Bernard & Avis DeVoto and the Forgotten Fight to Save the Wild. In the book, Schweber tells the story of the extraordinary couple who rescued national parks from McCarthyism, and inspired a future of conservation.

More than 150 gatherings took place Saturday at National Park Service sites nationwide. They were organized by a group of off-duty or former park service staff and seasonal employees.

Amache, a former Japanese incarceration camp in Colorado, is now officially part of the National Park system. Many survivors and descendants are excited about the news.

A new report shows that visitors to national parks spent a record amount in surrounding communities last year, providing a major economic boost to those areas.

For years national parks have been running into the same issue, overcrowding. Now many other places, like wildlife refuges, state parks and shorelines are also experiencing this problem.

The National Park Service released visitation statistics this week showing that five of the top 15 most-visited parks in 2022 are in the Mountain West. Big crowds can put pressure on national parks, though.

Black Americans used the Green Book in the mid-1900s to find safe places to travel. Now an organization in the Mountain West is highlighting many of these locations.