Crater Lake National Park is back open for business.
Robin Hurt of Jo’s Motel and Campground in Fort Klamath says the Crater Lake shutdown hit hard…
“It cut our income by more than 50 percent. And that’s with a lot of local grocery traffic. And so if we were just a motel, we would be basically dead in the water.”
Volker Dempel of Tennessee was one of the first visitors to enter the park this morning…
“I wasn’t planning on it, until last night at 12 o’clock, and I said, well, what the heck – I’ll try and see if they’re open.”
“Well, we had planned out vacation for six months to visit all the national parks…and guess what…” Notes park visitor John Harris of New Mexico. “So we did the California coast, and saw some beauty there, and we’re doing our trip backwards now.”
Not all services at Crater Lake are open.
Crater Lake Lodge is now closed for the season…as are the campground and facilities at Mazama Village.
However, the Crater Lake Cafe and Gift Shop in the Rim Village are back open for business.
Over 200 employees were benched during the shutdown.
“We did receive a letter that we could share with our creditors.” Said Marsha McCabe of Crater Lake. “So that we could explain to them why we might be late on some of our payments.”
Those not employed by the federal government won’t be getting back pay.
And Robin Hurt notes it will be hard to catch up financially…
“October is good for 10 percent of our annual income usually. So, we lost 5 – boom – out the door.”
But visitors are just happy the shutdown is finally over, and the park is back open.
All 68 of the park’s federal employees that had been furloughed are back on duty. An additional 10 park staffers remained on duty during the shutdown.
Park concessionaire Xanterra hires 185 people at the peak of the season, 16 will be working through the winter.
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