Several national park sites across the Southwest are now closed due to the ongoing federal government shutdown.
The closures are documented on a National Park Service website posting active alerts from federally managed sites and attributing the closures to “the lapse in appropriations.”
White Sands National Park, a popular sand dune destination in New Mexico, is closed. Also in New Mexico, Gila Cliff Dwellings National Monument, home to archaeologically significant caves, is closed. At Valles Caldera National Preserve, a dormant volcanic caldera with forests and meadows, the main entrance and park facilities are closed, but the pedestrian entrance remains open.
Carlsbad Caverns National Park remains closed, as SFGATE reported last week. The park’s website, though, doesn’t show a closure alert like the others. The park announced its closure on Facebook, where several commenters said they’d driven long distances only to learn cave tours were canceled.
To the west, Montezuma Castle National Monument, a limestone cliff dedicated to preserve Native American culture, is closed in Arizona. Also in Arizona, cliff dwellings at Tonto National Monument and the hilltop pueblo at Tuzigoot National Monument are shuttered.
The national park and monuments have something in common: All are sites with archaeological significance that could be vandalized or destroyed without ranger oversight and protection. During the last federal government shutdown in 2018-2019, petroglyphs were vandalized at Big Bend National Park in Texas.
The Department of the Interior’s shutdown plan states that “parks may close grounds/areas with sensitive natural, cultural, historic, or archaeological resources vulnerable to destruction, looting, or other damage that cannot be adequately protected by the excepted or exempted law enforcement staff that remain on duty.”
The closures come as fall temperatures are cooling down in the desert, making parks and national monuments in hotter regions of the country safer and more accessible to visit.
Communication on closures is sparse: The Park Service closure alerts page doesn’t list every shuttered site. Bandelier National Monument, for example, has seen closures not mentioned on the alerts page or its homepage. But the visitor center’s recorded voicemail says that Frijoles Canyon, hiking trails and the visitor center are closed because of the shutdown.
The Donald Trump administration said it would keep parks open and “accessible as possible” during the shutdown, staffing them with skeleton crews performing “excepted activities” such as law enforcement and emergency response. More than 40 former park superintendents called for closures across all parks to protect natural and cultural resources.
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