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What the National Parks Built This Year
Charlie Cichetti
October 11, 2026
Smart strategies. Sharp stories. Sustainability that sticks.
📬 INTRO: WHERE THE IDEA STARTED
On June 30, 1864, Abraham Lincoln signed a bill protecting Yosemite Valley and the Mariposa Grove “for public use, resort, and recreation.” The Park Service calls it the first time in history that land was set aside purely for preservation and recreation for all people.
Yosemite has been on my list for years, and I finally get to stand under those sequoias on the way back from a big waste audit! Lincoln's idea now draws 323 million visits a year. It's 162 years old, but America’s national parks are constantly inventing new ways to keep improving this extraordinary American legacy. Here's a rundown on what they built in 2026!
The Mariposa Grove, protected since 1864. Photo: NPS
🌍 FIELD NOTES: BUILT FOR THE BACKCOUNTRY
🪨 The Road In
In 2006, the Ferguson rockslide dumped nearly 800,000 tons of debris onto Highway 140, a main route into Yosemite. Traffic has detoured over temporary bridges ever since.
In July, Caltrans poured the first concrete for the fix, a $285M, 675-foot rock shed built from precast segments jacked into place around a curve.
“It's definitely like a project of a lifetime for an engineer,” project manager Corey Casey told ABC30. This shed is designed to stop a large rock slide.
🚦 No Reservations Required (Thanks to Tech!)
Yosemite dropped its reservation system for 2026 and leaned on smart traffic data. The park once logged more than 120 gridlock days a year. This year it had two!
It was the first park to publish real-time visitor information, and it's piloting camera-based parking counts. In an August survey of 1,203 visitors, 91% waited less than 15 minutes to get in.
Tunnel View, Yosemite. Photo: NPS / Cindy Jacoby
💧 The Water Problem
Grand Canyon's Transcanyon Waterline broke in early August. Then an Aug. 29 flash flood wrecked about 40% of the old pipe, and the park closed all in-park overnight lodging.
The new pipeline came through undamaged, and residents should have water by Thanksgiving.
Yosemite alone runs 29 water systems and 22 wastewater systems, with $381M in deferred repairs between them.
Flood response at Phantom Ranch, Sept. 5. Photo: NPS
🌉 A Bridge Over a Moving Mountain
On Sept. 2, Denali opened Pretty Rocks Bridge, a $230M, 475-foot steel truss over an active landslide.
Twenty-three thermosiphons keep the permafrost frozen under one end. They pull heat out of the ground with no pumps and no power.
Pretty Rocks Bridge, Denali. Photo: NPS
📱 The Funniest Page on LinkedIn
The Park Service runs one of the best pages on LinkedIn, with 1.1 million followers. This week it compared evergreens to “that coworker who never takes a sick day.”
It also shared a sticker certifying a monument “NOT HAUNTED,” with the reply: “You should see the places we do haunt.” The rangers reach desk workers on the most buttoned-up platform online, then invite them outside.
From the National Park Service LinkedIn page, Oct. 6, 2026
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🏛 BUILT TO LAST:
The Park Service ended fiscal 2025 with $24B in repair needs, and the fund behind much of this work expired in 2025. A House bill to renew it at $1.9B a year cleared committee in June.
By role:
📐 Designers: Grand Canyon takes North Rim redevelopment comments until Nov. 6. (Our Waste2Zero team helped develop the North Rim's TRUE Zero Waste strategy in 2024!)
🔨 Builders: Caltrans posts Ferguson rock shed progress photos online, keeping their ‘clients’ (we the people) up to date.
🏢 Operators: Yosemite lists every water and sewer system on one fact sheet. Do the same for your campus.
🌱 Emerging pros: Learn how thermosiphons work. Denali just bet a bridge on them.
💬 QUOTE OF THE WEEK
“Fund the maintenance budget before the flood. It always costs less than the recovery”
— Charlie Cichetti, CEO of Skema and LEED Fellow
🧠 TL;DR
This year the national parks started a $285M rock shed, swapped reservations for traffic data, fought a Grand Canyon water crisis, and bridged a moving landslide. That’s legacy in motion.
🧱RETROFIT THIS
🔧TOOLS DOWN:
Lincoln signed the Yosemite Grant in the middle of a war,
for people he would never meet.
Every road, bridge, and water line since was built for those same strangers.
You're one of them.
Go see what they built for you this fall.
And wave at the excavators on Highway 140!
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✍️ Brian Bollinger, our Head Writer, helps sustainability professionals connect performance, workflow, and real-world results.
🌍️ Charlie Cichetti, our Fearless Leader is the CEO of Skema and a LEED Fellow. He has guided more than 150,000 professionals as building practice continues to evolve.
Let’s Green Up together.
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