Beginning January 1, 2024, Lake Mead National Recreation Area will transition to a cashless fee collection system, accepting only electronic card payments for entrance, lake use, and campground fees. Entrance stations will continue to sell passes but will no longer accept cash for payment.
The new system is adopted as a best practice that will be safer, more efficient, will cut down on visitor entry times, and will be more cost effective. The transition will eliminate about $90k per year in armored car transport costs, in addition to staff-hours saved in transporting and counting money. This system will also be a safer, more secure means of collecting fees, reducing potential opportunities for theft or robberies.
This fee system will align the Lake Mead National Recreation Area with twenty-nine other National Park Service locations, such as Bryce Canyon, Grand Canyon, Mount Rainier, North Cascades, Olympic, Death Valley and Petrified Forest parks, among others, that have already made this transition. It will also align this park with several local and state destinations in the area that are moving – or have already moved — to cashless systems.
