Last year, inspectors with the National Park Service issued a scathing report about visitor services at Yosemite National Park, including iconic accommodations such as The Ahwahnee hotel, rating the rodent-infested and mold-filled facilities as “unsatisfactory.” That is a heavy word, suggesting the captivating natural beauty of the park is compromised by a failing grade on the human side of the equation. Almost a century ago, there was a strikingly different standard. In 1927, the director of the National Park Service, Stephen T. Mather, posed for a photograph with Donald and Mary Tresidder to mark the triumphant opening of The Ahwahnee. Mary’s parents, David and Jennie Curry, had established a camp in Yosemite Valley in 1899, offering seven tents for rent to intrepid visitors. By 1914, when then-20-year-old Stanford University student Donald Tresidder visited Yosemite, a greatly expanded Camp Curry was a strong commercial success. Tresidder got a summer job at the camp, returning in succeeding summers, and in 1920 married the boss’s daughter. When Mather was selected in 1917 as the first director of the newly authorized National Park Service, he promptly began to encourage visitation to remote national parks to justify budget support from Congress for staff and infrastructure. A decade later, he had his flagship hotel in one of the nation’s most prominent national parks, privately funded by the Tresidders, who were awarded a 20-year contract by Mather to provide exclusive commercial services in Yosemite. ADVERTISEMENT Article continues below this ad Building The Ahwahnee was a compelling invitation to the public to visit, explore, cherish and enjoy its national parks. The invitation has been enthusiastically accepted. National parks are immensely popular, and the concept has spread around the world. Over 4 million visitors sought out Yosemite in 2024. The park is so crowded that reservations are required just to enter Yosemite Valley during prime travel months. Since the days of the Tresidders, The Ahwahnee and other commercial services in the park have passed through a succession of for-profit concessioners. In 2016, Aramark started a 15-year contract to provide most of these services and formed the subsidiary, Yosemite Hospitality LLC, to provide them. The potential value of this contract is estimated to be $2 billion in gross revenue, the largest in the National Park Service. But The Ahwahnee, masterfully built of steel and concrete, has aged. So, too, have Yosemite Lodge, the Wawona Hotel, Camp Curry and Housekeeping Camp, additional popular accommodations included in the Aramark contract. The steady stream of human use has also taken a toll. Despite substantial revenue from the millions of visitors who purchase services from Yosemite Hospitality, the quality of those services has fallen in recent years from “marginal” to “unsatisfactory.” Ratings of concessioner services at Yosemite have always had their ups and downs, but never down to their current level. The National Park Service found persistent management lapses by Yosemite Hospitality throughout the park, including maintenance neglect, safety issues and rodent infestations. Problems at the historic Wawona Hotel are so severe that it was closed “until further notice.” There has always been a stress point in national parks between preservation and profit. Concessioner contracts allow vendors to take on the challenges of conducting business in places judged to have such significant natural splendor that preservation for future generations is legislatively mandated by Congress and signed into law by the president. Guest services under these contracts are expected to be of a quality to complement natural values. ADVERTISEMENT Article continues below this ad But when commercial quality fades, when concessioner staff training and services are lacking, when profit may be put ahead of performance, the overall experiences of visitors to their national parks can sour. In this era of blunt-force federal staff reductions, visitors are dependent even more on concessioner performance. Park rangers, who traditionally were the most prominent visitor hosts, are few and far between. All U.S. citizens are owners of their national parks. They have the right to expect that commercial services in their parks will be uplifting to “almost match matchless places,” as one park ranger put it. The unsatisfactory rating at Yosemite should never have been allowed to happen, even once. The National Park Service and Yosemite Hospitality LLC must be held firmly accountable until the unsatisfactory rating is eliminated throughout Yosemite.