Word: parkes
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Grand Canyon National Park, the crown jewel of America's park system, is being overrun. And like many other underfunded and deteriorating national parks, it is ill prepared for the invasion. Summer has barely begun, and cars and campers are already queuing up in lines nearly a mile long at the entrance gates. The wait for dinner tables at park restaurants is two hours, and families without advance reservations are being turned away from campgrounds that have been booked for weeks...
...visitors who descend on the park each day are a mere trickle compared with the daily flood tide of 27,000 that park officials expect in July and August. By midsummer, they predict, hour-long waits for shuttle buses to the overlooks will be common. Fistfights will break out in parking lots as thousands of motorists compete for 2,000 slots. So many hikers will suffer from exhaustion and other heat-related problems that park rangers will be forced to practice triage, leaving the least seriously affected vacationers at the bottom of the canyon to fend for themselves. Says...
...statistics are as awesome as the canyon: the number of park visitors has more than doubled in a decade, from some 2 million in 1984 to 4.7 million last year. If the tide is not checked, the National Park Service estimates, there will be 7 million visitors by 2010. "We are under siege," says park superintendent Robert Arnberger...
...first glance the park seems spacious enough to accommodate all comers. It covers more than 1.2 million acres and the most dramatic 56-mile stretch of the 277-mile-long Grand Canyon. But the broad vistas are deceptive. The rugged terrain funnels visitors along narrow strips of trails and roads alongside both rims and into facilities that have been overcrowded for years...
...exhibit will be on display until October 10, and is sponsored by Parks Canada and the U.S. National Park Service in cooperation with a consortium of New England historical institutions...