Not all parks are closed during the present unpleasantness. Recreational Resource Management is announcing on its website that:
These are small operations when compared to, say, Yellowstone. Still, they are open. Unlike, say, the Marsh-Billings- Rockefeller in Vermont which is run by the Park Service and employs 26 people who are not, at present, being paid. The park covers slightly more than 600 acres and is visited by more than 30,000 people a year. More than 20,000 of them come during October, for the foliage.
There isn’t a lot good to be said for the shutdown. Lousy way to run a government. But perhaps it might restart a conversation about privatizing some government assets. A little park, like the one in Vermont, might either be run for profit or taken over by an interested foundation.
It is a dust mote in the eye of Washington where some paring down is overdue and it would be missed only by the empire builders of the bureaucracy.
