Shutdown closes Bay Area home of the ‘father of the national parks’

In fewer than minutes two separate carloads of people pulled up to the John Muir National Historic Site in Martinez last Saturday But then they turned away because the -acre park with its Victorian mansion historic pear orchard and visitor s center had been closed to the inhabitants without notice Related Articles Letters Prop is a counter to Texas redrawn map Air traffic controllers who duck unpaid work during the shutdown could be fired Duffy warns Who is Adelita Grijalva and what is the argument over her being sworn in to Congress Budget office says substantial firings of federal workers have started in governing body shutdown Speaker Johnson keeps the House away as he fights to end the ruling body shutdown What s going on a man in one car required When recounted that the park was closed because of the federal establishment shutdown he noted I didn t expect a historic site to be closed I feel bad He had driven an hour from Santa Clara to Martinez having heard that a famous American once lived there That eminent figure is Muir the Scottish-born naturalist who founded the Sierra Club and hosted President Theodore Roosevelt on a camping trip in Yosemite in Muir is called the father of the national parks in part because the writing he did in his Martinez evaluation persuaded Americans to see their wilderness areas as treasures to preserve not as materials to be exploited John Muir National Historic Site in Martinez pictured on Wednesday Oct is closed to the populace due to the executive shutdown Aric Crabb Bay Area News Group But since Oct Muir s home has been shuttered a closure Jonathan Jarvis the director of the park institution from to and Mark Rose Sierra Nevada and clean air senior project manager of National Parks Conservation Association stated was emblematic of the murky future of the National Park Operation Popular national parks in the Bay Area such as Alcatraz the Golden Gate National Recreation Area and Point Reyes National Seashore remain open during the shutdown though selected of the larger open-air parks will offer bare-bones services But three smaller historic parks have been closed in Contra Costa County Rosie the Riveter World War II Home Front National Historical Park in Richmond the Port Chicago Naval Magazine National Memorial in Concord and the Eugene O Neill National Historic Site in Danville Tao House located at the Eugene O'Neill National Historic Site in Danville where playwright Eugene O'Neill and his wife Carlotta lived from to is one of the national parks closed due to the federal regime shutdown Cindi Christie Staff Archives Jarvis and Rose explained they fear the shutdown could become a pretext to drastically reduce funding for the country s community parks even as they broke attendance records in with million visits Earlier this year President Donald Trump proposed million in cuts to the park utility as detailed in a May letter to the Senate Committee on Appropriations from Russell Vought director of the White House s Office of Management and Budget potentially wiping out budgets for at least of the parks according to the National Parks Conservation Association Even though a House Appropriations Committee proposal would avert the administration s greater part damaging cuts the park amenity has still lost a quarter of its permanent staff since earlier this year the parks association declared With the shutdown more than parks employees have been furloughed without pay according to the Department of the Interior s National Park Institution Contingency Plan Friday Vought declared on X that The RIFs have begun referring to reductions-in-force of the federal employees now furloughed because of the shutdown Politico validated with an OMB spokesperson that the reductions are substantial and not furloughs The administration has been calling it a reduction in force but it would just be a mass termination of potentially hundreds of thousands of additional park system staff Rose revealed The park function in an email mentioned it remains committed to maintaining as much access as viable to park lands during the lapse in appropriations Critical functions that protect life property and residents strength will continue to be staffed The spokesperson did not respond to a question about prospective layoffs saying We do not have comment on personnel matters The White House Press Office s automatic reply email stated media members could expect delays in responses because of the shutdown In contrast to the official parks amenity report Rose and Jarvis describe a more dire situation To stay open larger open-air national parks are relying on skeleton crews which may be challenged to stop vandalism harm to wildlife or damage to natural materials Rose also stated general safety is compromised as help could be delayed if visitors get lost or injured This situation is the effect of a combination of incompetence and intent declared Jarvis who lives in Pinole During a authorities shutdown he closed all the national parks and announced it s stupid that parks are not all closed right now though this move would be politically unpopular He explained the circumstances around this shutdown are unlike anything he s seen It s chaos upon chaos he declared of the current state of the national park amenity Jarvis and Rose describe a top-down style of leadership in the U S Department of the Interior which runs the park operation resulting in confusing information about what s open what s closed and how the constituents should be notified The national parks shutdown contingency plan stated that park websites and social media would not be updated nor will regular notices of road or trail closures be posted Jarvis has raised concerns that the Trump administration is setting up national parks to fail In a worse-case scenario he described in The Guardian the parks failure would give this administration an excuse to privatize the park organization s high-visitation cash cows such as Yosemite Yellowstone and Grand Canyon As for the hundreds of smaller parks Interior Secretary Doug Burgum in May proposed the idea of transferring them to state agencies as recommended by the Office of Budget and Management Jarvis mentioned that wouldn t be easy given that each national park was established by Congress and new decree would be needed to strip them of their status It s also questionable whether a great number of states could step in to run these parks he announced The John Muir site and the other Contra Costa parks fall into that category The park system manages more than sites that highlight places related to important figures and events in American history This includes famous battlegrounds presidential homes and others that have been established to elevate narratives about those sidelined in traditional texts Interior of the Rosie the Riveter World War II Home Front National Historical Park visitor center on Thursday Oct in Richmond Calif This site is closed to the inhabitants due to the regime shutdown Aric Crabb Bay Area News Group So the Bay Area is home to the Rosie the Riveter park which spotlights women who contributed to the war effort local Japanese Americans and Black settlers from the segregated South World War II also provides the backdrop for Concord s Port Chicago Naval Magazine National Memorial which honors Black soldiers killed in a explosion while unloading munitions a tragedy that led to desegregation of the military Even if the Trump administration doesn t have the legal authority to offload these sites Jarvis expressed concern about the moral aspect of sending the message that they should be removed from the national park system You re basically saying that the people that the stories that these parks represent are not relevant to the American experience and that s just horrible Jarvis commented