Your fourth grader is a free national park pass, and screenshots don’t count

Your fourth grader’s free pass saves you whatever you would have paid at federal park gates, up to $80, because $80 buys a U.S. family the annual pass that does the same job. The form asks for a zip code and a printer, because a screenshot of the paper opens nothing. Any fourth grader living in the United States or its territories can get one, and so can a homeschooled 10-year-old. The pass in force covers national parks, national forests and other federal lands and waters, and it expires August 31, 2027.

The program, Every Kid Outdoors, keeps a very short honor roll. Its latest annual report records one fourth grader’s family using the pass at national parks 34 times between September 2023 and August 2024, and another pass holder reaching 28 different parks. For the rest of its 1,856,802 vouchers, voucher being the program’s word for the paper pass, it publishes no trip count, so we priced the trips ourselves.

Three parks or thirty, the pass saves you $80 at most

Two $35 parks cost $70 at the gates, so the free pass saves $70. A third takes the total to $105, and a family paying its own way would buy the $80 annual pass at the first gate. At federal entrance fees for a U.S. family, three parks or thirty, the most this pass can save you is $80.

Now take one car once around Grand Canyon, Zion, Bryce Canyon and Arches, which post $35, $35, $35 and $30.

Pay at each gate$135

Annual pass$80

Fourth grade pass$0

Source: National Park Service fee pages, 2026; our calculation.

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A family that knows its route pays the lesser of $135 and $80, so the fourth grade pass is worth $80 on this trip.

The pass saves nothing in the Smokies

Great Smoky Mountains charges no entrance fee. It sells parking tags, and its page says America the Beautiful passes, the federal series this one belongs to, are not accepted in place of a tag. Most Park Service sites are free to visit anyway.

The pass also earns nothing on a fee-free day, the last of 2026 being November 11, or in a car already carrying another federal pass, such as the Senior, Military or Access (disability) pass, because one pass covers the car. It doesn’t cover parking, camping, boats or special tours, and private operators inside a park may refuse it.

Buying the $80 pass still makes sense when your child will stay home, since this pass works only with the student at the point of entry, and for any trip after August 31, 2027.

Your in-laws from abroad cost $100 a head at eleven parks

Eleven parks charge non-U.S. residents aged 16 and older $100 a person on top of entry in 2026, among them seven of the eight fee parks in the table, all but Arches. On our loop, one such relative adds $300 at the gates.

The same page says all valid America the Beautiful passes cover the charge for the pass holder and passengers in a private vehicle, and the passes page lists the fourth grade pass in that family. The federal pass store’s question page says the $80 annual pass “does not cover any non-resident fees.” Two federal pages disagree about the $80 pass and neither answer names the fourth grade pass. Ask the park before $100 a head rides on it. Both agree on the $250 Non-Resident Annual Pass, which covers everyone in the holder’s car and costs less than the $300 on our loop. That $250 is also the most this pass could save such a car, and only if the park says it covers the charge.

Five rules belong in the glove box, and a phone picture breaks the first

A phone picture of the paper opens nothing.

Print it. The rules refuse any electronic version of the paper, at the gate and in exchange for a plastic pass.

Digital or plastic, never both.

The digital pass is a different thing from a picture of the paper. Recreation.gov turns your voucher into one in your child’s name, and after that “you will not be able to also receive a physical version.” Unstaffed sites may still want a printed PDF displayed in the car. The paper already gets you in, so the trade for plastic is optional.

One car, the one your child is in.

The pass can’t be transferred and covers up to one passenger vehicle, so the second car in a family convoy pays full fare.

Everyone in the car rides free; on foot or by bike, it covers three adults and all children under 16.

At a per-vehicle gate the pass covers everyone in one private, noncommercial vehicle, and a tour bus doesn’t qualify. The head count applies where a park charges by the person or you arrive by bike.

The summer after fourth grade still counts.

A child who finishes fourth grade in June 2027 keeps the pass through August 31, 2027. A law approved January 4, 2025, runs the program to September 30, 2031, and lets the agencies set each 12-month window, which leaves a younger sibling’s dates up to them.

New York logged three vouchers per fourth grader, and the report does not say why

New York went from 48,779 vouchers in the year ending August 2022 to 592,065 two years later, and it supplied 84% of the national rise in that last year. New York’s state parks accept the pass, but that offer dates to April 2016, more than six years before the jump began. Among the other 49 states and DC, Wyoming’s rate is about 14 times Rhode Island’s, 114.2 vouchers per 100 public school fourth graders against 8.2.

Nine Western states and DC sit just behind New York, and eight of the bottom ten are in the South. If your state sits near the bottom, don’t wait for a flyer. The form never asks for a school.

Print the pass the moment the screen appears

1. Open the fourth grader page, tick “Yes, I’m in the fourth grade or home-school equivalent” and press Play.
2. Let your child click through the short story game.
3. On the last screen, type a five-digit zip code and press “Get my pass.” It asks for no name and no proof.
4. Print the next screen on paper, right then. If you lose it, sign up again.
5. Choose whether to keep the paper, trade it for plastic or turn it into a digital pass.
6. Put it in the glove box. Show it to the ranger with your child beside you, and where no ranger is on duty, leave it on the dashboard with the bar code showing.

The printer cannot supply the fourth grader, and the gate wants both.

Does a 10-year-old need a photo ID at the gate?

The fourth grade rules ask only that the child be present, and the federal pass store’s question page prints a photo ID note under the resident annual, senior, access and volunteer passes and none under this one. The Park Service’s general rule still asks passholders to show a photo ID with each pass. Bring a school ID and your own.

Do state parks take the pass?

State parks take it only where the state says so, as the program’s rules warn. New York’s accept it for the vehicle use fee in what the state has called a pilot program since 2016, and Wyoming’s take it for free entrance and day use. Those savings sit on top of our $80 cap, because the federal annual pass isn’t valid at state parks.

Can a child who isn’t a U.S. citizen get the pass?

The law’s test is residence, in the words “any fourth grader or home-schooled learner 10 years of age residing in the United States, including any territory or possession of the United States.” The sign-up form asks for no proof of either.

The tables we built and the calculations we ran on this page are free to reuse under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0: credit Kidsomnia and link here. Government figures inside them stay under the agency’s own terms.