By Maria Tsvetkova, Brad Brooks and Rich McKay
NEW YORK/ROCKY MOUNTAIN NATIONAL PARK, Colorado (Reuters) -Angie Hill felt relieved when she arrived with her family for a long-planned visit to the Statue of Liberty on Thursday morning and discovered the site was indeed open despite the U.S. government shutdown a day earlier.
Visitors to other U.S. national parks and historic sites were less fortunate, their travel plans spoiled by the partisan divide in Washington.
Hill, 39, a nurse from North Carolina, bought tickets for a boat ride to see the Statue of Liberty for her family months in advance of their trip to New York City. When news about the government shutdown broke, they thought they may not get to visit Liberty Island, which has an on-site museum, but decided to take their chances.
“We just showed up,” Hill told a reporter, happy that her family got to see the iconic statue. “I think our government’s not being managed as well as it could be or should be. But there’s only so much in our control.”
The government shutdown, the 15th since 1981, has led to the suspension of scientific research, economic data reports and a wide range of other activities. The situation at the country’s 63 national parks has been less than clear-cut, however.
To the delight of Hill and other tourists, the Trump administration announced on Thursday morning that it had decided to keep the Statue of Liberty and nearby Ellis Island open.
Only a day earlier, New York Governor Kathy Hochul said the state would not step in to keep the sites up and running as it did in previous shutdowns. Together, the two sites in New York Harbor drew 3.7 million people last year.
Visitors to the late President Jimmy Carter’s grave in Plains, Georgia, were not so lucky. Philip Kurland, owner of a local gift shop, reported a threefold increase in traffic on Wednesday – the 101st anniversary of Carter’s birth – but said visitors were turned away from the main attractions.
“They’ve all been disappointed,” Kurland said. “They wanted to pay their respects” to the former president, who died last December at age 100.
In Philadelphia, a red banner on the Philadelphia Visitor Center’s website announced the Independence National Historical Park buildings, including those that house the Liberty Bell and Independence Hall, were closed.
The visitor center at Martin Luther King Jr. National Historical Park in Atlanta was closed, denying visitors a look at the original Ebenezer Baptist Church, where the celebrated civil rights leader preached.
MANY PARKS STILL ACCESSIBLE
The National Park Service had developed a contingency plan that called for furloughing more than 9,000 of its 14,500 workers in the event of a shutdown and outlined what services would remain available.
Most park roads and trails would “generally remain accessible to visitors,” the nine-page plan said, but visitor centers and bathrooms would close. Even so, the centers at Ellis and Liberty islands in New York Harbor were open on Thursday.
The service planned to suspend guided tours, routine maintenance or trash collection, but law enforcement, emergency response and fire suppression would continue as usual.
The decision to allow visitors to enter most parks even while furloughing thousands of workers may have pleased some visitors, but it likely upset more than 40 former national park superintendents who last week urged Interior Secretary Doug Burgum to completely close all parks during a shutdown.
In an open letter they said that “iconic symbols” at some parks were vandalized in previous shutdowns, while piles of trash accumulated and the safety of visitors was jeopardized.
California’s Joshua Tree National Park, named after the spiked yucca plants that grow across the park’s high-desert landscape, suffered damage during a 35-day shutdown in 2018-2019.
“A lot of folks decided that since there was no law enforcement, that meant that they would break the rules and drive off-road and cut down trees and things like that,” said John Lauretig, president of Friends of Joshua Tree. “I worry about our national parks not being protected.”
At Colorado’s Rocky Mountain National Park, scores of tourists lined a road running alongside a meadow on Thursday as a bull elk kept watch over a herd of 25 cows. But the visitor center, located 11,976 feet (3,650 m) above sea level, was closed.
October marks peak season at the park, which draws some 19,000 people a day to see the explosion of autumn color in its forests.
Park staffers were unwilling to speak on the record but they expressed concerns about safeguarding visitors and the park’s impressive natural beauty during the shutdown.
“Our national parks are our common ground,” said Joann Brennan, 63, a photography professor working on a project capturing images of the parks. “No matter what political party you are, it really is common ground because there’s a joy that we share when we experience places like this.”
(Reporting by Maria Tsvetkova in New York, Brad Brooks in Rocky Mountain National Park, Rich McKay in Atlanta, Andrew Hay in Taos, New Mexico and Alan Devall in Joshua Tree, California; Writing by Daniel Trotta; Editing by Frank McGurty and Jamie Freed)
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