Yosemite interim superintendent outlines summer operations, digital passes and a proposed gateway-community charter

Interim Yosemite National Park Superintendent Ray McPatton updated the Madera County Board of Supervisors Tuesday on summer operations, a scaled-back reservation approach, technology to track entrance wait times and a proposed "gateway community" charter to institutionalize county-level input on park decisions.

McPatton said the park installed new measurement technology at entrance stations this summer to track how long vehicles wait at gates. "The vast majority of days, people are going to wait less than 10 minutes to get into the park," McPatton said, while adding that some Saturday mornings still produce waits approaching an hour, and at the South Entrance waits have reached about 90 minutes at worst.

McPatton said Yosemite launched a scaled-back, more visitor-friendly reservation system this summer, reducing the number of days and hours requiring reservations while increasing the number of day-use tickets available. "On average summer days we increased from about 3,925 cars [in 2024] to about 5,187 cars this summer," he said, emphasizing the figures track cars not people. The park is targeting a working capacity of roughly 12,000 cars in the park at a time to keep emergency services and visitor flow functioning smoothly.

McPatton described plans to introduce a digital day-use pass after Labor Day; visitors would buy a pass online and display a QR code at the gate to speed entry. He also said the park has added public Wi-Fi at the Big Oak Flat (San Francisco area) entrance and plans to add Wi-Fi at the South Entrance in coordination with gateway communities.

On outreach, McPatton shared a draft gateway-community charter the park has circulated to surrounding counties that would convene three representatives from each county for quarterly meetings to provide early input on major operational decisions, including reservation-policy changes. "We want to engage you in our major decision making, before we're there," McPatton said, describing the charter as an operational companion to Secretarial Order 3434 that asks national parks to work with gateway communities.

Supervisors thanked McPatton for engagement and asked questions about reservation timing, campground booking patterns and impacts to local gateway economies. Supervisor David Rogers noted campground reservations often sell out within minutes when released; McPatton confirmed that Tuolumne Meadows camp reservations sold out within seconds after reopening. McPatton said increased day trips from nearby Central Valley communities are driving higher visitation while overnight stays and international visitors remain down, a pattern that has reduced spending in gateway communities despite rising park entries.

Why it matters: The park's operational shifts affect visitor experience, traffic and local economies in Madera County and other gateway communities. The proposed charter would formalize local input on reservation policy and other operational changes.

What's next: The park asked counties to review and comment on the draft gateway-community charter; McPatton said the park and its regional director would sign the final charter if counties concur. He did not present a binding implementation timetable for the charter at the meeting.