County tourism and Yosemite officials outline visitor trends, reservation changes and gateway charter

Mariposa County tourism leaders and Yosemite National Park officials told the Board of Supervisors on Aug. 12 that the county is seeing fewer overnight visitors while the park has expanded day-use access and is testing tools to measure and manage crowding.

Jonathan Farrington, executive director of the Yosemite Mariposa County Tourism Bureau, said the county is down “about 11.4% year to date” in visitation and that July was down about 16.9%. He and other tourism leaders credited high lodging rates and a decline in international visitors for part of the drop and said the bureau is using new data tools to better understand visitor patterns.

“For Mariposa County, . . . it’s the 1 to do list item,” Farrington said of new subscriptions the bureau has purchased to aggregate lodging and visitation data, referring to Smith Travel Research and DataFi services that pull occupancy and transactional indicators.

Park leadership described a different but related trend: Yosemite has expanded daily day‑use passes during reservation hours and invested in entrance‑line measurement. Ray McPadden, interim superintendent of Yosemite National Park, said the park has deployed technology that lets staff measure wait times at gates and track how many day‑use vehicle passes are available.

“We generally, if you’re going to Arch Rock Entrance . . . you’re going to wait, like, less than 10 minutes,” McPadden said, while noting “Saturday mornings, people are still very much piling up.” He said the park increased the number of vehicle passes available during reservation hours this summer — a change that staff estimate has increased daily day‑use vehicle access by roughly 30% compared with 2024.

McPadden said the park projects roughly 4.5 million visits in 2025 based on through‑July data and cautioned that wildfires or storms could change that projection.

McPadden outlined a draft Gateway Community Charter the park is circulating to counties around Yosemite; the charter would establish a quarterly forum in which counties could designate representatives to consult with park leadership on plans that affect gateway communities. “We want to talk more with you and we want to give you input into what’s going on in the park before we make a decision,” McPadden said.

County supervisors and tourism officials discussed how the new data and the charter could help businesses plan for changing demand. Farrington said the bureau is working with lodging and retail partners and with state contacts to try to bolster international promotion and provide better forecast information for local merchants.

Public comment at the meeting included a brief report from the Mariposa Visitor Center, which said visitor groups this year are more often two people per party and that the daily Yosemite reservation pilot ends the following Friday. Farrington and board members encouraged continued coordination among the tourism bureau, Yosemite Gateway groups and the county to share forecast and marketing tools.

County and park officials said the next steps include continuing operational changes at park entrances, refining the reservation approach for next year, and forming the Gateway Community group to provide earlier county input on park decisions. The park plans to share the Gateway draft for county review and to place the reservation model on the charter agenda at the first meeting.