Sandy Point was among the first Maryland state parks to roll out the day-use reservation system to reduce traffic backups and capacity closures during peak season. Maryland Department of Natural Resources photo
Maryland Park Service’s new day-use reservation system is working as designed to stop the frequent capacity closures that took place at popular state parks before the system was implemented in 2025.
In the spring and summer of 2025, the Maryland Park Service launched the new system that requires visitors to make advance reservations on weekends and holidays for daytime visits during the summer season at five different state parks–Greenbrier, Sandy Point, Point Lookout, Newtowne Neck, and North Point. The results were overwhelmingly positive.
Between Memorial Day Weekend and Labor Day, more than 67,000 reservations came through the new system and the associated call center processed more than 4,000 calls. The results at the ground level were more dramatic with traffic backups at participating parks nearly eliminated and zero capacity closures at parks where the system was installed. This is a complete turnaround from 2024, when 166 capacity closures happened in the park system.
“This first-ever statewide park reservation system is about putting people first,” said Maryland Department of Natural Resources (DNR) Assistant Secretary of Land Resources Paul Peditto. “By eliminating long lines and modernizing access, we’re making Maryland State Parks more welcoming, more equitable, and more efficient—so visitors can spend less time waiting in line and more time enjoying the outdoors.”
Nearly 8,000 of the reservations in 2025 were made using Maryland Park Service Annual Park Passes, or the Military and Veteran free pass.
The impetus of this effort was years in the making. In 2019, the Maryland Park Service hit a record number of visitors for the year as 14 million people flowed into our parks. Already an amazing achievement, what followed was an unexpected surge requiring creative solutions to meet unprecedented demand.
The COVID-19 pandemic that began in early spring of 2020 brought everyday life to a standstill in Maryland and beyond. With people looking to get outside and break the monotony of social isolation, Maryland’s state parks provided an obvious choice. Overnight, the park system was discovered and rediscovered by visitors At the end of the year, more than 21.5 million people had visited Maryland state parks, a 45% increase over the previous record-breaking year. And the number of visitors in subsequent years, although slightly lower, were still well above past visitation rates.
Faced with the sudden flood of new visitors, some of Maryland’s more popular parks felt the strain right away. On weekends and holidays during the peak summer months at several popular parks, lines of cars snaked down rural residential roads for miles, hours before opening, sometimes beginning as early as 3 a.m. on weekends and popular holidays. And despite visitors often waiting in lines for hours at a time, many still had to be turned away once they reached the gates of the park because it was already at capacity. One of the more dramatic examples existed at Greenbrier state park where hundreds of visitors backed up U.S. Route 40 for several miles, causing safety concerns and frustration for adjacent highway travelers, adjoining homeowners and the visitors themselves. A video taken by staff documenting a 3.1-mile backup on July 4, 2024 demonstrates the significant issues borne of these long queues awaiting entrance to the park.
In recent years, park closures due to capacity issues had become so commonplace they were occurring more than 150 times each year.
Other park systems across the country, including the National Park Service, experienced a similar sharp increase in visitors. Many began to implement reservation systems for day-use visitors to alleviate the strain on parks and staff. These systems also ensure that visitors know ahead of time that they are guaranteed entrance, or if they need to look to find an alternative park to visit. Success at other park systems led the Maryland Park Service to launch the day-use reservation system in 2025.
After a thorough review of proposals, and significant support from information technology and finance staff at DNR, the department selected the technology vendor Kaizen Labs to implement the system and developed a contract that pays the company a fee per booking. The five parks that received the new system were chosen based on visitation numbers, safety issues caused by vehicle backups, and conflicts with neighboring landowners and travelers attempting to gain access to their homes.
Before the system’s Memorial Day weekend launch, park staff members trained on the new system and DNR representatives spoke to dozens of media outlets to spread the word about what visitors should know and expect.
“It was a big change and we knew it would take time for visitors to adapt to thinking ahead to secure their reservations, rather than waiting in long lines,” said Maryland Park Service Deputy Director Rachel Temby.
The real test came on the first day of Memorial Day weekend 2025, as the day-use reservation system rolled out to the public at the two largest parks in the pilot program–Sandy Point and Greenbrier. Extra staff members were on hand at the park entrances, including Spanish translators, to teach visitors how to make reservations on their phones. People learned quickly once they saw the advantages of pre-booking a spot rather than queueing up at the entrance in the wee hours of the morning. Word spread fast and the number of weekend and holiday reservations increased steadily over the next few weeks. In fact, the opening weekend went so well that the other three parks were launched on June 19, ahead of schedule.
By the time the pilot program ended on Labor Day, the numbers revealed a success. Visitor feedback was overwhelmingly positive, as people learned that making a reservation would take the guesswork out of their trip and essentially eliminate their wait at the park entrance.
“As we approach the New Year and look at the 2026 season, we are closely studying our pilot program to determine how we can streamline our process and make it even more efficient,” Temby said.
The Park Service is closely examining the visitation trends of other busy parks for possible inclusion in the program to further reduce backups and capacity closures in other parts of the state. At the same time, the Park Service is bringing in a new camping reservations vendor in late February that will introduce many brand-new and exciting features to enhance the park visitor experience.
“This new reservation system truly modernizes how people experience Maryland State Parks,” Peditto said. “We are looking forward to building on the foundation created by the success of this pilot program.”
