Why do campers have to pay fees?
A couple decades ago the Forest Service and increasingly other government owned recreation sites realized that they no longer had the budget to run their sites for free. At first they started charging their own fees and in some places they still do. These government fees were normally much less than the cost of running the site, and often were not paid by the customers. So the government turned to private sources, who had a profit motive to make sure the fees were paid. These private concessionaires were allowed to set their own fees as long as the fees were close to what others were charging and that the fee amount meant only low to moderate profits for the private entity. Often the companies had other motives other than profit for being in business. For instance Hoodoo also benefits from being able to provide year around jobs for its ski resort employees. This has helped us keep our fees lower. Private concessionaires also help the local areas by paying personal property taxes, room
