Within just two months of taking office, the Trump Administration has made policy changes with significant implications for the National Park Service. NPS cuts have been far-reaching, touching everything from personnel to properties leased by the Park Service.
Perhaps the most controversial was the firing of 1,000 probationary employees from the Park Service on February 14. The effects of these NPS staff cuts are already being felt across the national park system. Some parks are reducing their visitor center hours, others are canceling ranger-led tours, and many are experiencing longer waits to enter the park. Remarkably, this isn’t the first time the National Park Service has faced this sort of crisis.
NPS budget cuts created a crisis in 1969
As Congress prepared to pass a budget for fiscal year 1969, NPS Director George Hartzog, Jr. did the laps through the hall of power, ringing the alarm bells. He visited Secretary of the Interior Stewart Udall, and both the House and Senate Appropriations subcommittees. In all offices, his warning was the same: “there [is] not enough money for the National Park System to continue field operations at acceptable levels of preservation and visitor use.”
The grim forecast was not heeded. Hartzog — who served as the integrity-driven director of the NPS from 1964 to 1972 — was forced to make tough choices.
According to his autobiography, Battling for the National Parks, he gathered his deputy directors to determine how best the NPS could spend its insufficient appropriation. He came up with three options:
- Operate all parks as normal and risk allowing resources to be damaged.
- Close small, less visited parks entirely.
- Limit the operation of all parks for a portion of each week or year.
“There was no unanimity as to how to approach the problem so I decided to spread the pain, inflicting as little as possible at any one area,” wrote Hartzog. He decided that all parks would function at 90% of their normal operating schedule. “This included cutting hours, closing seasonal facilities out-of-season, and closing some areas altogether.”
The blowback for the move was swift, particularly in New Mexico. Carlsbad Caverns, the only national park in the state at the time, was forced to shut down two days a week. Ten other national monuments in the state faced the possibility of reduced operating hours. As the Albuquerque Journal wrote, “A storm of protest greeted the realization Friday in New Mexico that an Interior Department austerity program which will close national parks and monuments two days a week may have a severe effect on the New Mexico economy.”
In April of 1969, Utah’s Deseret News ran an article titled “Why Closing Parks is False Economy.” False economy is a term used to describe budget cuts that are intended to save money in the short term but end up costing more in the long term. Just like today, national parks in 1969 were economic engines, driving tourism in the West and bringing in a great deal more money than was spent on them. Closing them during the busy season represented losses of millions of dollars to the surrounding rural communities.
While politicians and journalists amplified the anger of the people, some people took matters into their own hands. A ranger stationed in Petrified Forest National Park later wrote an account, which Hartzog included in his biography: “A few hearty souls tried to push down the gates with their cars to the detriment of their cars. Judging from cartridge cases, one frustrated visitor had emptied the family Luger at one of our best locks during the night.”
Ultimately, Hartzog’s action birthed a new political strategy: “The program…was assigned a name—a newspaper man in Washington dubbed it the Washington Monument Syndrome. The popular memorial was one of the areas put on a reduced operating schedule.” The name has stuck. Today, it is recognized as a legitimate political strategy that forces the public to rally around popular government services.
Ultimately the protests — which ranged from pointed letters to dented fenders — had the intended effect. Congress passed an additional appropriation of $17 million to return all parks to full operation.
The aftermath of NPS cuts in 2025 feels similar to 1969
Like in 1969, cuts to NPS staff have resulted in the reduction of services at many national parks. Saguaro National Park is closing its visitor centers on Mondays. The Fiery Furnace in Arches will be closed to the public starting March 23. Devils Tower National Monument will require visitors to leave the park by 5:00 PM.
Similar to 1969, the public was voiced their disdain for the staff cuts that produced these reductions. On March 1st, thousands of individuals gathered at more than a hundred national park units to protest the cuts. The protests were organized by a coalition of off-duty NPS staff calling themselves the “Resistance Rangers.”
Already, it appears that the outcome of this crisis may be similar to that of 1969. Shortly after the February 14 removal of NPS staff, the Department of the Interior ended a hiring freeze and authorized the park service to hire 7,000 seasonal staff, an increase from previous year. In addition, a federal judge has ruled that the mass termination of NPS staff was illegal, ordering the Department of the Interior to immediately rehire them.
As is often the case in the study of history, its hard not to see the parallels between the past and the present. In 1969, the public spoke out very loudly when they felt their national parks were in danger. With similar events taking place today, we can only hope for a similar outcome.
A version of this story first appeared on Will De Man’s Substack, National Park History.
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