The politics took on a sharper tone on Tuesday, as a pro-immigrant rally was allowed to take place at the “closed” National Mall near where, five days earlier, World War II veterans first breached barricades in a high-profile moment in the shutdown. The Park Service has since padlocked the area, but has intermittently allowed veterans (though nobody else) to enter.
In the Great Smoky Mountain National Park in Tennessee, rangers shut down Foothill Parkway, a major thoroughfare used by School Bus 49 to shuttle kids to school from the small community of Top of the World, causing a frustrated Blount County Mayor Ed Mitchell to tell Fox News: “We were founded on a Declaration of Independence. And they are about to push the people to the line again.”
At the Gettysburg National Military Park Museum and Visitor Center, gate-crashing visitors posted Twitter photos from the battlefield with the phrase “Catch Us If You Can” written on notes. At Zion National Park and Badlands National Park, visitors have taken to simply tossing cones aside or pushing away barricades to enter.
The 3,000 Park Service personnel who remain on duty (20,000 have been furloughed) have been hesitant to get too heavy-handed in response. On Sunday, however, a jogger was fined $100 for taking a run inside Valley Forge National Monument, despite signs saying it was closed. He says he’ll fight the ticket in federal court.
One area where the government seems to have the clear right to put up barricades or “closed” signs is where there are pay gates to enter an area. But for parks and monuments where people can simply wander onto federal lands, blocking access touches on a “a huge [legal] gray area,” says Dale Goble, a land policy expert who specializes in the sagebrush rebellions of the West.