Park Ranger Sandra Lenoir takes money from a visitor at the entrance of the Vicksburg Military Monday morning.(Brian LodenThe Vicksburg Post)

[12/28/2004] Vicksburg National Military Park visitors will be paying higher entrance fees with the additional money earmarked for improvements in the park.

The basic per-vehicle fee to enter the preserved Civil War battlefield will go up Saturday from $5 to $8. That fee allows a car or light truck carrying six or fewer passengers to enter the park for up to a week.

For individuals riding in vans with seven or more passengers or school buses, or entering the park on bicycles or walking, the per-person fee will rise from $3 to $4. Permits for special activities, such as commercial filming or organized hikes, will also increase according to the new fee schedule.

The price for annual park passes, which many locals prefer, will not increase from its current $20.

Under a formula set by Congress, national parks can keep about 80 percent of the entrance fees they raise to pay for projects that would not otherwise be funded in their annual allocations. This year, the budget for the park here was projected to be $2.3 million.

The remaining 20 percent is to be administered by the National Park Service, which allows all its individual parks, whether or not they collect fees, to compete for funding for specific projects.

The VNMP expected to net collections this year of about $156,000 after deducting $154,000, the cost of collecting the fees at park entrances.

Projects for the money include a parking area near the Kentucky monument in the tour road’s South Loop, updating the film shown at the visitor center and the purchase of emergency medical equipment for use by park staff, Superintendent Monika Mayr said.

The fee hike was not expected to keep many people from visiting the park, Mayr said.

The park has averaged 972,028 visitors a year over the past three complete years. Through Dec. 4, records show 894,378 visitors had entered the park.

One visitor, Jim Linker of Redondo Beach, Calif., was touring the park with his son, Evan, 18, and daughter, Dantel, 15, Monday morning. They were visiting relatives over the holidays and had stopped here on their way from Missouri to Dallas, paying $5 to enter the park in a minivan.

Asked whether the higher fee would have affected Linker’s decision to pay the entrance fee, Linker said, “I would’ve had to think about it.”

“You’ve come all this way, for another $3, what are you going to do?” Linker said.

Also visiting the VNMP at the same time were Cim and Richard Hirsch of Tampa, Fla. They “like Civil War things” and had already visited Natchez, Cim Hirsch said.

“We didn’t even know there was a fee when we came here,” she said. “It takes money to take care of things, so we assume that would be the reason they’d raise the fee.”

The park here was created in 1899 to protect much of the siege line established by Union and Confederate forces in 1863. Lines and entrenchments are carefully preserved and states represented have built monuments, memorials and placed markers to honor their soldiers.

Fees are being raised as part of a program Congress authorized for the National Park Service and other federal agencies in 1996. Called the Recreational Fee Demonstration Program, the program is aimed at “reducing the backlog of maintenance to improve the visitor experience,” NPS information says. Parks may spend the money annually or save it.

“For bigger projects, if the management team decides to approve them, then we can bank the money,” Mayr said.

Separately, Mayr said detour signs are in place to give travelers of the park’s tour road guidance following a road slide due to heavy rainfall here earlier in the month. Major reconstruction had already been scheduled for next year for the stretch of road that slid, on Connecting Avenue, near the USS Cairo Museum.

“Visitors are getting a full visit, minus that little section on Connecting Avenue,” Mayr said. “And the project has gotten a heightened level of attention to make sure it gets initiated in the spring or summer for the actual repair.”