Yosemite Lodging and Cabins

Jane Engle, TRAVEL INSIDER

On a recent visit to Yosemite National Park, I was enchanted by new paved trails and boardwalks that meandered through towering pines, shady glades and rippling streams at the base of Yosemite Falls.

Along the way, I also found new interpretive plaques, one of which alerted me to a small granite spur near the Upper Falls called Lost Arrow.

"Its name comes from a story about a deer hunter who was in the high country celebrating his conquests," the plaque said. "From the cliffs above the valley, he shot a victory arrow into the air. When the wayward point dropped to the ground, it turned to stone."

This was just the sort of insight, I mused, that a park ranger might provide — if you could find one.

During my several hours in Yosemite Valley, I never saw a ranger. I had the same experience last summer at Grand Teton National Park in Wyoming.

What has happened to these once-ubiquitous helpers in the funny hats?

The short version of a complicated answer seems to be this: Some are gone, some have been reassigned and some have been replaced by volunteers and employees of nonprofit groups and concessionaires — the private companies that run lodges and other services at parks.

In the last decade, the National Park Service has added 20 parks, an increase of 5.4% and totaling more than a million acres, but it has added only 4% more employees. (The agency could not provide separate figures on interpretive rangers — those who guide and educate visitors.)

But in the last two decades, officials of several national parks in California told me, the ranks of such rangers have dwindled in many parks. The root reason, they say, is a persistent shortfall of government funding. Because of this, many parks have called on so-called partner organizations to fill in the gap.

One of these, the private, nonprofit Yosemite Fund, based in San Francisco, raised most of the $13.5 million it took to renovate the Yosemite Falls visitor area. Employees and volunteers from another private nonprofit, the Yosemite Assn., based in El Portal, Calif., answer phones, help staff the visitor center and conduct seminars. Delaware North, the park's concessionaire, also runs educational programs.

"If there are four or five programs a night, maybe only one is done by a National Park Service ranger," said Scott Gediman, a Yosemite spokesman. It's possible, he said, to spend several days in the park and attend a full schedule of walks and programs without ever encountering a park ranger.

Even the daily van tours of Yosemite Valley are run by Delaware North, albeit with a real ranger on board. The price: $22.50 per adult.

Gediman said Yosemite had maintained services by recruiting private help. At other parks, however, a dearth of interpretive rangers means fewer nature walks and evening programs and shorter visitor center hours.

"We do some roving, but we don't do as much as we'd like to," said Yosemite's Gediman. "You're more likely to see an interpretive ranger on the trails in the Tuolumne Meadows than you are in Yosemite Valley."