Alcatraz Island Is Open Again — After Several False Starts

Alcatraz Island reopened to visitors on Friday after more than two days of closures during the federal government shutdown, but some tourists and the businesses that rely on them continued to be frustrated by the back-and-forth.

On the first day of the shutdown, which has shuttered several popular National Park Service sites, including Muir Woods, NPS.gov noted that Alcatraz would close for one day, Wednesday, due to a “planned project,” then reopen “for its regular schedule on Oct. 2 with all facilities OPEN.”

But on Thursday morning, NPS said Alcatraz Island was now “closed due to lapse in federal appropriations.” The park service offered no timeframe for the closure and said any ticket purchases through the ferry company that operates boat service to the island, Alcatraz City Cruises, would be refunded.

On Friday, Alcatraz City Cruises’ website said tours to the island had finally resumed at 10:30 a.m. The company did not respond to KQED’s queries about reopening on Friday, but a message on its website said, “All Alcatraz Tours are operating as scheduled.”

The 10:30 a.m. opening meant the first four boat rides to Alcatraz Island — for which tickets had already been sold — were canceled, resulting in long lines at Pier 33’s Alcatraz Landing ferry dock. Rachel Giblett, visiting San Francisco from Australia, was one of those who discovered this firsthand.

This was the second time her group’s Alcatraz tour had been rescheduled this week after they originally bought tickets for Thursday. The tour was pushed to 8:40 a.m. Friday, and they were only notified that the tickets were being moved again around 40 minutes before that, she said.

“This has now pushed out our time in San Francisco, which means that our future plans are pushed out,” said Giblett, who was concerned about their plans to visit Yosemite National Park next. “It’s really unfortunate.”

The two-day closure allowed NPS staff to work with the organizations that provide services to and on Alcatraz and finalize plans to keep the island open to the public, said Christine Lehnertz, president and CEO of the Golden Gate National Parks Conservancy.

“It just took some time to put in place the agreements that we can continue to do that work,” said Lehnertz, whose nonprofit membership organization supports parks within the Golden Gate National Recreation Area. Considering the need for plans to move from the park to the regional NPS offices to the Department of the Interior, “frankly, it moved pretty quickly,” Lehnertz said.

The conservancy confirmed Friday that, unlike other national parks, the reopened Alcatraz will be “operating as normal” during the shutdown.

The plan for national park closures during the shutdown has meant that while some sites like Muir Woods and Fort Point have been completely closed, others remain open but with parking lots blocked, bathrooms locked or staff greatly reduced. Advocates had previously expressed alarm about the Interior Department’s last-minute shutdown contingency planning for national parks.

San Francisco received 23.3 million total visitors in 2024, according to SF Travel. And with an estimated 1.6 million visitors per year, Alcatraz remains one of the city’s biggest tourist draws. During the 2018–19 government shutdown, Alcatraz remained open, though night tours were canceled.

“A government shutdown is hard on everybody who loves parks,” Lehnertz said. “It limits access for visitors. It certainly creates real hardships for National Park Service staff. And they’re the frontline stewards of these places.”

And “there’s only so much that we can do as a nonprofit when parks are shuttered,” she said.

Brendan David, owner of local tour company San Francisco Excursions, said local tour companies like his had been overwhelmed over the last few days trying to deal with the swift and often-changing closures.

The closures have meant 50% of his tour itinerary — which takes visitors around San Francisco, Muir Woods, Sausalito and Alcatraz — has been off the table for the last several days.

“It’s affecting us business-wise — like, really bad with cancellations [and] having to give 25% off,” David said.

Tour guides offering visits to Yosemite National Park have also reported cancellations in recent days. While Yosemite remains open during the shutdown, extremely reduced staffing means that entry gates are unmanned, with no fees being collected, and visitor centers are locked.

International visitors have often been outright confused by the idea of a government shutdown itself, David said. “Really, the worst part is just seeing the people coming [from] all around the world and the disappointment they have.”

“We’re here to advertise San Francisco, the Bay Area, United States, and it’s really hard to do that right now,” he said. “And a lot of them just don’t understand how a country like ours is in such a mess.”

Commenting on the shutdown and its impact, Australian tourist Giblett said she was “just concerned for the American people, really.”

Lehnertz stressed that anyone planning to visit a national park during the shutdown should expect to “visit in a way that’s probably a little different than you might have planned” — and to consider themselves “acting park rangers right now.”

“Visitors are the people who can help to preserve and protect and steward these parks,” she said.

“Those connections to nature and each other are really important — and these disruptions are difficult,” she said.

KQED’s Amanda Hernandez contributed to this report.