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Hoover Park drops entrance fee to draw more visitors
by Gregory R. Norfleet · News · May 28, 2008
The Herbert Hoover National Historic Site will stop charging visitors the $6 fee to walk around the grounds and inside the historic buildings among the 187-acre park starting Sunday, June 1.
Superintendent Cheryl Schreier said the National Park Service hopes to increase park attendance while also conforming to new federal fee legislation.
She said the park weighed the declining revenues — last year it was about $35,000 — with the cost of collecting those fees.
“We were subsidizing the fee program with base operating funds,” she said.
Schreier also said that Hoover would have wanted it that way.
“President Hoover’s desire was that he wanted people to be able to walk through the birthplace without having to pay for the privilege,” she said.
She said the park saw its peak in visitors in 2004 and it has been on the decline ever since.
The Herbert Hoover Presidential Library and Museum will still charge to get in. Director Timothy Walch said he is optimistic it will boost visits to the park “and likely help us with income.”
The park will continue to sell and accept interagency passes, which allow tourists to enter any of the NPS sites, like the other 11 presidential libraries or parks run by the Army Corp of Engineers.
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