People love national parks for the wild, natural spaces they preserve and the outdoor access they provide. Their striking landscapes have inspired artists, writers, and thinkers for decades, but something much more mundane makes all that possible.
Visitors don’t often think about park infrastructure, but roads, utilities, bridges, and buildings are what make these dream vacations a reality. And when it comes to maintaining this infrastructure, the National Park Service (NPS) is in serious trouble.
The NPS has a deferred maintenance and repairs (DMR) backlog of $24 billion, according to 2025 data. That number “represents the funding necessary to bring National Park Service assets to an acceptable and safe condition,” the agency explained.
There are pothole-filled roads, broken water systems, and crumbling buildings in national parks, monuments, historic sites, and recreation areas across the country. A number as large as $24 billion can be difficult to wrap your head around, so we dug into the data to understand which 10 parks need the most help, and what continued delays in repairs mean for their future.
The Parks Most in Trouble: Key Takeaways
The 10 parks with the greatest backlog account for $5.5 billion, representing 23% of the total amount of DMR, and more than 50% of the total DMR from just national parks ($9.43 billion). These 10 parks alone account for more than the entire annual NPS budget, which totaled $3.267 billion in 2026. In its 2027 budget proposal, the Trump administration recommended giving the NPS $2.2 billion.
The Top 3
Three parks total over $1 billion each: Yellowstone ($1.2 billion), Grand Canyon ($1.1 billion), and Yosemite ($1.1 billion). Of course, this makes sense, given how popular these parks are. They consistently rank in the top 10 most-visited parks annually, with over 4 million visitors each. The more visitors a park has, the greater the stress put on its infrastructure.
These parks share a key similarity: Their roads are in terrible shape. Together, the necessary repairs to their paved and unpaved roads total $1.16 billion. Yosemite alone needs $539 million to fix its roads. This infrastructure is so basic that we don’t even think about it until we have to. You likely don’t worry much about the roads in your local neighborhood until a giant pothole blows your tire.
Grand Canyon National Park’s biggest infrastructure concern centers around water, the most basic necessity. Fixing the three water systems in the park would cost $359 million. This data was collected in 2025, before the recent fatal flash floods that damaged a waterline so severely that the NPS implemented stage 4 water restrictions in the park, shutting off potable water access at multiple points within the canyon. Given these events, that repair bill is likely now much higher.
Surprising Entries
Much of the rest of the top 10 most in-need parks includes several other popular sites: Olympic, Grand Teton, Great Smoky Mountains, and Sequoia and Kings Canyon. However, the list also includes a few less frequently visited parks:
- Death Valley National Park (Calif.): $507 million
- Shenandoah National Park (Va.): $229 million
- Mesa Verde National Park (Colo.): $226 million
Death Valley only got 1.3 million visitors in 2025, but ranks in the top 5. The backlog for paved roads ($346 million) is over half the total ($507 million). The park has 1,022 miles of roads, which visitors heavily rely on to get around. The park is the hottest place on Earth, rendering other modes of transport (on foot, by bike) unsafe.
And the park’s weather is part of the reason why the roads are in such bad shape. The high temperatures here (which exceed 115 degrees in the summer) can cause asphalt to warp, buckle, and degrade. And the park also regularly experiences flash floods, which erode shoulders and damage roads.
The stats on Mesa Verde National Park evince long-term neglect. The park only receives 463,000 visitors annually, but has a DMR of $226 million, which is more than triple its annual economic output ($74 million). It only has 107 miles of roads; yet to fix them, it would cost $88 million, which is $822,429 per mile. To put that in context, it costs $208,736 annually to maintain a mile of road on a New Jersey State Highway, which gets far more traffic than remote roads in this park.
The Bare Minimum
In addition to calculating the DMR of each park, the NPS provides the amount each park needs in “annual routine maintenance.” This number represents the “minimum annual investment needed to sustain current asset conditions and meet ongoing maintenance and recapitalization needs. Without this investment, asset conditions will continue to deteriorate, compounding long-term costs and increasing the deferred maintenance backlog,” NPS reports explained.
For all 60 national parks with available data, the total annual figure comes to $557.7 million. That number doesn’t represent complete operating costs, nor does it include staff salaries, wildlife management, emergency response, and many other NPS functions, and yet it represents 17% of the total 2026 NPS budget.
Yellowstone National Park alone needs $69 million annually not to improve, but just to maintain its status quo. Yosemite needs $54 million, and Glacier National Park needs $25 million. This money represents taking care of buildings, utilities, campgrounds, and other structures that the NPS (and thus the taxpayer) has already spent money to build. Many of the buildings across the NPS system are important historic structures.
It’s well-documented that national parks can be a boon for their local economies, supporting jobs and bringing in tourism dollars. For the 10 parks with the greatest DMR, their need for repairs nearly exceeds their annual economic output. Together, they need $5.5 billion and contribute $7.8 billion to the economy.
If the parks’ annual routine maintenance needs aren’t met, that DMR number will continue to rise. To welcome visitors (and welcome their dollars), national parks must have the resources to support visitor experience, accessibility, and safety.
