Sorry Sir, Your Money’s No Good Here!

Okay, this is really sad. And once again, I’m afraid Doug Burgum is to blame. Here is the first paragraph from a Facebook post by Theodore Roosevelt National Park yesterday:

Theodore Roosevelt National Park

Beginning May 1, 2026, Theodore Roosevelt National Park will transition to a fully cashless fee system. Entrance fees and other in-person sales will be processed using mobile payments, credit cards, or debit cards at park sales outlets. The transition to electronic payment is safer, reduces transaction times, and improves accountability. Visitors who are only able to pay with cash may purchase a park pass from one of two local third-party vendors in the surrounding communities.

So, as of May 1, 2026, the United States Government will no longer accept United States Currency from people who want to visit a United States National Park.

WTF? Here’s some more language from the Facebook post:

Also starting May 1, 2026, the park will require reservations for all campsites at Cottonwood Campground, Juniper Campground and Roundup Group Horse Camp. Reservations must be made through Recreation.gov via the Recreation.gov. mobile app, or by calling 877-444-6777. Cash and check payments will no longer be accepted for campsites at these campgrounds. Same day reservations will be available and may be made up to six months in advance for individual campsites through Recreation.gov.

Now, I’m guessing I have probably camped a hundred nights in Theodore Roosevelt National Park over the last 50 or so years. I’ve almost never made a reservation there—only in the last few years, when we bought a camper and no longer pitched our tent in a tent site. I used to just drive in, pay my entry fees to the ranger at the gate, find a campsite, grab one of the envelopes, put in my campground fees, and drop it in the money box. And then pitch my tent. I usually put cash in that envelope, but once in a while, a check. North Dakotans do that, you know. Or used to.

I remember when camping was $6 a night. Not too many years ago. I remember grumbling when it went up to $10. Just a few years ago. Now it’s $20. Still, a bargain to spend a night sleeping beside the Little Missouri State Scenic River in the North Dakota Bad Lands.

But now, no more envelopes and no more money box. And no, I can’t just go to the Visitor Center and pay my camping fees there. I called the park and checked on that today. If I’m an unsuspecting and unexpected camper, I have to call that 877 number from my car on my cell phone, get out my credit card, pay over the phone, get assigned a campsite from someone at a phone bank in the offices of Booz Allen Hamilton (you’ve heard of them, right?), the giant company that operates http://www.reservation.gov on a contract with the National Park Service, an agency of the U.S. Department of Interior, run by none other than Doug Burgum.

All of this assumes, by the way, I have a credit card. There are a lot of people who, for various reasons, do not have a credit card. You and I know some of those reasons. I won’t go into them here, but you know . . . Sorry, but they can no longer camp at Theodore Roosevelt National Park. Or even get in the gate.

I asked the friendly ranger who I talked to at the park yesterday why this is happening. Basically, it’s a lack of staff. It takes staff time to count the money and take it to the bank. Credit cards are just quicker. He said they will have the same number of staff this year as last year, but they are expecting a lot more traffic because of the opening of the Theodore Roosevelt Presidential Library. This is a pre-emptive move on their part, I guess.

But it’s not just our park. It seems that the NPS is implementing this on a system-wide basis. A number of parks around the country have gone cashless already, and more are on the way.

I’m not the only one unhappy with this. One of my favorite travel websites, appropriately called “The Travel,” devoted a pretty lengthy story to this, starting with, “National Parks have historically been bridges to nature, an accessible route to the wild. They’ve celebrated this idea of wilderness for all, welcoming all Americans and visitors to the country to come and see the beauty of the United States. Now, this inclusive attitude that long ruled the NPS seems to be going extinct.”

Yep, that’s a sad thing. Americans who can’t get into their own national parks. You can read the whole article here.

And there are some folks in our nation’s capital pretty pissed off too, so much so that they have introduced a couple of bills in the U.S. Senate. One of our own Senators, Kevin Cramer (good for you, Kevin), even signed on as a sponsor on one of them. called the “Protecting Access to Recreation with Cash Act.” The PARC Act. Cute, eh?

Neither of the bills has gone anywhere–that first one sponsored by Kevin Cramer appears to be dead, but the second one is still sitting on a Congressional shelf awaiting action–but at least a few senators are making a statement. I’ll keep an eye on them. The most recent is S.1037, introduced on March 13, 2025, still alive and awaiting action.

The whole text of the bill reads:

“The Secretary of the Interior shall require that any unit of the National Park System at which an entrance fee is charged in accordance with paragraph (1) accept cash as a form of payment for the entrance fee.”

The Secretary of the Interior. Did you read that, Doug Burgum? Would you support that, and ask Kevin and John and Julie to vote for it? After all, starting May 1, people are going to be denied acess to the national park back here in your own state, a park named for Theodore Roosevelt, whose Presidential Library here is being opened this summer. Surely you wouldn’t support that if you were still Governor, would you?

And I’d like to suggest they add even stronger language to the bill, something like, “No one will be denied access to a national park because they do not have a credit card and want to pay in cash.”

Finally, I’d like to suggest to the folks working out at Theodore Roosevelt National Park that if some young family driving a beat-up 1997 Subaru, with kids hanging out the window on a hot summer day, pulls up to your gate and doesn’t have a credit card, you just wave them through anyway. I think we’d all rather have them go home and say, “Those nice folks out in North Dakota let us into their national park without paying,” instead of, “We went to the national park in North Dakota this summer so the kids could see the Bad Lands, but they wouldn’t let us in because we didn’t have a credit card.”