Madera County’s Yosemite National Park attracts 4 million people annually, making it a robust economic engine for nearby mountain communities and beyond.
“The impact of tourism is huge,” said Dan Cunning, CEO of the Oakhurst-based Yosemite Sierra Visitors Bureau, which serves as the marketing arm for tourism in Madera County.
“Madera County, which is primarily an agricultural county, is driven by tourism which is by far the No. 2 economic driver,” he said. The newest opportunity for merchants near the park is the 150th anniversary of the signing of the Yosemite Grant Act. It will be formally celebrated June 30.
The National Park Service estimated that in 2012, the most recent year for which figures are available, visitors to Yosemite spent nearly $380 million at businesses operating within the park and in nearby “gateway” communities.
But the effects of those dollars – spent at hotels, motels, restaurants, grocery stores, gasoline stations and souvenir shops – are felt well beyond the park boundaries, to the tune of almost $472 million in employee salaries and other “value added” economic multipliers for Yosemite’s gateway region, defined as communities within 60 miles of the park. That includes such popular jumping-off points as Fresno, Oakhurst and Mariposa.
Across the country, only a few national parks generate more visitor spending for their regions than Yosemite, which began when President Abraham Lincoln signed the Yosemite Grant Act in 1864 to preserve the Yosemite Valley and the Mariposa Grove of giant sequoia trees. The landmark legislation set the stage for development of national parks in the U.S.
The ripples go even farther afield. A comprehensive July 2009 survey of park visitors revealed that San Francisco was most often identified as the city where tourists from outside the area spent their nights before and after visiting Yosemite.
Visitors to all of the National Park Service’s national parks, historic parks and recreation areas in California spent an estimated $1.5 billion in 2012. Yosemite alone accounted for about 25 percent of that.
Delaware North, which has held the concessions contract at Yosemite since 1993, is the biggest beneficiary of that spending. Not only is it the largest concessionaire in the National Park Service system, its Yosemite contract is the single largest agreement at all the park service facilities in the country, with gross revenues estimated at $125 million to $130 million each year.
The biggest share of the money spent by visitors inside the park, about 42 percent, is for lodging.
Restaurants get about 21 percent of the business. Rounding out the spending is groceries and takeout food, camping fees and charges, admission fees, gasoline, guide fees, recreation/ entertainment and all other types of purchases.
Owners of hospitality businesses – hotels, bed-and-breakfasts, restaurants and gift shops – say Yosemite’s importance to their livelihoods cannot be overstated.
“People want to come to the mountains for the mountain experience, but Yosemite is the destination spot they’re coming to,” said Marlo Burghardt, general manager of the Narrow Gauge Inn hotel and restaurant in the town of Fish Camp, just south of the park.
A few miles down the highway, in Oakhurst, “probably about 90 percent of our business is customers who are visiting the park,” said Bill Putnam, general manager of the Best Western Plus/Yosemite Gateway Inn. “And that’s going to be true in any of the gateway communities, very definitely. … It’s very definitely trickle-down economics for us.”
Putnam also underscored the seasonal nature of the business. “Our occupancy is about 30 percent to 40 percent in the winter, but as much as 99 percent in the summer,” Putnam said of his 133- room motel. “Quite honestly, if we don’t make our money in the summer, it can be a very tough year. … In the off-season, we break even; but we make our money in the summer.”
Along busy Highway 41 in Oakhurst, map boards on the walls of Reimer’s Candies testify to the international clientele the park has attracted to the shop after just over a year in business.
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