Up until recently, Crane Flat Campground in Yosemite National Park had seen better days.
Fire rings and picnic tables were rusty, the park service wrote, and a lack of defined campsites and parking spaces caused visitors to trample over sensitive vegetation. When reading through online reviews of the campground, park staff realized that it had become “a last resort for campers” when campsites elsewhere in the valley had already filled up. After years of neglect, Crane Flat shut down in 2020.
A $9.8 million federal grant recently made way for the campground to undergo major renovations and open to visitors for the first time in four years, the park service announced this week.
The grant, which was awarded to the project via the Great American Outdoors Act, paved the way for a host of upgrades at the campground. Notably, all campsites were graded after the park service noticed that a main complaint among visitors was a lack of flat areas to pitch tents.
“Historically, these were undesirable campsites due to the challenging grades, but now they’re some of the best spots in the campground,” Matt Outhier, a National Park Service worker who led the campground’s restoration, said in the park’s news release.
Tent pads were also added to campsites, and underground pipes were installed to improve drainage at the campground. New fire rings and picnic tables were installed at each campsite and landscaping was added along roadways to prevent vehicles from driving over vegetation. Vegetation that had previously been trampled was also restored.
Before shutting down in 2020, Crane Flat hosted more than 100,000 visitors a year, according to the park service. The campground is just west of Yosemite Valley and features a dense conifer, pine and oak forest.
“I really hope this becomes a desirable place where people want to come and stay,” Outhier said in the news release. “I hope people come back and notice how different it is now. That’s what I’m most excited about — to see people’s reactions and read reviews that are positive.”
