A National Park Service report released this month estimates about four million visitors to Yosemite National Park in 2011 spent more than $379 million in communities surrounding the park, which includes Madera and other counties.
This spending, which doesn’t include park entry fees, supported 5,057 jobs in these areas around Yosemite. The overwhelming majority of those spending money in these areas were non-local visitors.
Nationally, 29 percent of park visits were by locals and 40 percent were day trips. Most visitor spending is on lodging, food, and beverage service (63 percent). The rest is on recreation and entertainment (17 percent), other retail (11 percent), transportation and fuel (7 percent) and wholesale and manufacturing (2 percent).
The report was a peer-reviewed spending analysis of national park visitors across the country. It was conducted by Michigan State University...