A sign in Battery Park says the Statue of Liberty is closed due to the government shutdown, Oct. 1, 2013, in New York City (Spencer Platt/Getty Images)
First they were scammed by a man who was selling what they later learned from police were counterfeit tickets to the Liberty Island ferry. Then they saw the signs that the Statue of Liberty was closed until further notice along with thousands of other national attractions because of the federal government shutdown. Visitors could still pay to take a $24 cruise to circle the island, but the statue was off limits.
“It’s incredibly disappointing,” Wilson said, as she sat on a bench planning her next steps. She said she had been vaguely familiar with the looming threat of a government shutdown, but didn’t realize it would directly impact a vacation she had planned for months.
“I guess we can hold out hope that maybe they fix this while we are still here, but who wants to bet on that? Neither side down there seems to be interested in working together, and we’re the ones who feel the impact," she said.
Wilson’s frustration was echoed across the country as Americans faced the first full day of the first government shutdown in 17 years.
The shutdown closed some of the nation’s most popular tourist spots, including the Liberty Bell in Philadelphia and the hundreds of national parks around the country. That includes Yosemite National Park in California, which had been set to mark its 123th anniversary on Tuesday but was closed.
In Washington, D.C., the memorials and museums along the National Mall were closed or blocked by barricades, including the Lincoln Memorial. But down the mall, visitors to the World War II Memorial--including dozens of veterans--knocked down those barricades and entered the park anyway.
In New York, there seemed to be more reporters than tourists near the site where Park Service officials would usually screen tourists for a trip to Liberty Island. But large tour groups still occasionally wandered up—only to see the signs and walk away dejectedly.
There were no park employees around—save for one.
David Luchsinger, the superintendent of Liberty Island and Ellis Island, was spotted milling among the tourists dressed in his park ranger uniform and hat. He had come to talk to tourists, even though he had been furloughed like thousands of other federal employees around the country.
Asked why he was there, Luchsinger said he felt a responsibility to meet people who had made the pilgrimage to see Lady Liberty and try to explain what was happening.
“People keep asking me, ‘Why?’” he said. “For many people, especially our foreign visitors, this is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, coming here, and it’s just sad that we have to turn people away.”
But he also worried about the impact on his staff—many of whom had never experienced a government shutdown before and live paycheck to paycheck. That was his experience during the last shutdown 17 years ago, when he was laid off for three weeks while working at Fire Island National Park and was forced to take a temporary job working at a gas station to support his family.
“I don’t profess to understand this or why this is happening,” he said. “I just hope Congress does their job so that we can do ours.”
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