Silver City, NM - Starting on September 1st, 2015, Gila Cliff Dwellings National Monument will increase entrance fees for visitors in order to fund important maintenance and improvement projects within the park. The single visitor entrance fee will increase from $3 to $5. The family rate of $10 will not be affected and all passes will continue to be honored as in the past.

"This modest increase in fees (the first increase ever at Gila Cliff Dwellings) will allow us to continue to protect, preserve and share the special places here at Gila Cliff Dwellings National Monument for current visitors and future generations," said Gila Cliff Dwellings Superintendent Hugh Hawthorne. "After carefully considering the impact of a fee increase on visitors and community members, we came to the conclusion that this is the right course of action to improve facilities and services important to visitors."

Entrance fees have supported a wide range of projects that improve the park and visitor experiences, including Trail Maintenance, Renovation of our Visitor Contact Station and visitor amphitheater, creation of a new park movie and making the visitor center and contact station more ADA accessible. Additional revenue from this fee increase will allow us, in the next few years, to re-route the Cliff Dweller Trail out of the flash flood zone, repair bridges on the trail, do re-vegetation and erosion control work in fire scarred areas, create interpretive signs for the trail and renovate the Visitor Center Museum exhibits. Fees are not used to fund permanent salaries, improve employee housing, offices or IT infrastructure, purchase new vehicles, etc. and are only used on projects which directly affect visitor safety or the visitor experience.

In the fall and winter of 2014/15, the National Park Service conducted a nationwide review of entrance fees. To solicit public input, Gila Cliff Dwellings launched a civic engagement campaign in December 2014.

During the public comment period, the park received sixteen formal comments and eighteen informal comments on Facebook. While the number of comments was not large, those who chose to comment overwhelmingly supported the concept of a small fee increase. Please feel free to contact Hugh Hawthorne, Superintendent Gila Cliff Dwellings at hugh_hawthorne@nps.gov or 575-536-9461 with any comment or questions.