FEDERAL SHUTDOWN THROWS MANY TRAVELERS' PLANS INTO CHAOS.

Byline: Christopher S. Wren The New York Times

The standoff over a new federal budget did more than close down much of the American government over the last month. It also closed down the travel plans of hundreds of thousands of American tourists.

The National Park System, which normally attracts 383,000 visitors a day, was shut down, except for Grand Canyon National Park and Carlsbad Caverns National Park, because Arizona and New Mexico took responsibility for operating them. The city of Philadelphia put up money to keep Independence Hall and the Liberty Bell site open.

That left 366 other parks and historic sites closed, according to the Department of Interior, which furloughed 48,000 employees.

Until the shutdown, as many as 51,000 tourists had converged daily on the Statue of Liberty in New York harbor in January. Ellis Island, the shrine of American immigration, was locked, too.

In Florida, park rangers had to evict hundreds of legally registered campers from Everglades National Park, which had anticipated 50,000 visitors in the last two weeks of December. Thousands of winter sport enthusiasts were denied entrance to Yosemite National Park in California and to Yellowstone National Park in Wyoming.

Mount Rushmore in South Dakota closed, but the granite faces of Presidents George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln and Theodore Roosevelt didn't go dark. Presidential Savings Bank, a Maryland bank, assumed the floodlighting bill of $600 a month.

But hunters, fishermen and bird watchers were barred from 507 wildlife refuges operated by the Fish and Wildlife Service around the country. Only one, in Arkansas, was kept open, for hunting, by the state government.

With the shutdown widespread, the Government lost $104,000 a day in entrance fees to parks and sites, the Department of Interior reported; neighboring communities with hotels, restaurants and other tourist services lost an estimated $14.2 million a day in income.

The director of the National Park Service, Roger G. Kennedy, said the shutdown had also demoralized park rangers and other employees motivated by an old-fashioned sense of patriotism, not profit, who were left to scratch for financial survival.

"One of the worst things for our folks is a sense of powerlessness," Kennedy said, because they were not allowed to protect the nation's natural and historical heritage. Without such policing, he said, the sites were left vulnerable to artifact thieves and vandals.

Americans planning vacations overseas were not immune to the government's shutdown, which also suspended passport and other consular services. More than 200,000 Americans were left waiting for passports, the largest such backlog in the State Department's history. They included tourists who had bought nonrefundable airline tickets to keep their holiday costs down.

"It's unfortunate that American citizens are put in the situation of having to beg for passports, because passports are an entitlement," said Mary Ryan, the assistant secretary of state for consular affairs, who handled some of the calls. "It's disheartening to listen to people cry on the phone and not be able to do what they want, when it is not anything out of the ordinary."

Once overseas, tourists could no longer count on assistance from U.S. embassies and consulates, except in dire emergencies. "The standard here is really life and death," said Nicholas Burns, the State Department spokesman.

In Washington, virtually every tourist attraction run by the government closed to the public. The conspicuous exception was an exhibition of paintings by the 17th-century Dutch artist Johannes Vermeer at the National Gallery of Art. The exhibition reopened after the Richard King Mellon Foundation assumed the burden of paying more than $42,000 a week to keep the guards on duty.

At least it was easier to book a hotel room or a restaurant table in Washington, even if there wasn't much left to see. Emily Vetter, president of the Hotel Association of Washington, said the shutdown cost hotels 10 percent of their normal business in November and December. Taking sightseeing buses and other tourist services into account, Vetter estimated a 25 percent drop in revenue for Washington's travel and tourism industry over the three-week shutdown.

Kennedy said he worried not only about the deterioration of neglected parks and historical sites but also about the sense of betrayal felt by Americans who consider such assets an extension of their backyards.

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Photo Even the Statue of Liberty was closed to visitors during the federal government shutdown.