The State Parks That Charge Out-Of-State Visitors The Most
Most state park systems quietly run two price lists. Residents pay one number, out-of-state plates pay another, and the gap is usually bigger than visitors expect because the resident rate is often buried in a vehicle registration where nobody sees it as a park fee at all. The interesting measure is not the dollar amount, which rarely tops twenty bucks, but the ratio. A few systems charge visitors twice what locals pay, one charges roughly three times as much for an annual pass, and one park in Maine charges residents nothing whatsoever. These are the places where the premium is steepest, why the structure exists, and how to avoid paying it twice.
One note on how to read these. A resident fee collected through vehicle registration is still a fee, which means the honest comparison is annual pass to annual pass rather than gate price to gate price.
Baxter State Park, Maine
No system in the country runs a wider gap than this one, because the resident side of it is zero.
Baxter, in northern Maine, charges a $20 per-day motor vehicle fee for every car with out-of-state plates. Vehicles registered in Maine enter free. There is no resident pass to buy and no discount to calculate, which makes the ratio infinite rather than merely steep.
Two quirks are worth knowing. The fee follows the license plate, not the driver, so a rental car with Maine plates gets in free regardless of who is behind the wheel. And if you are camping, the fee is charged once for the stay rather than every day you re-enter.
Baxter also sits outside the regular Maine State Park Pass entirely. The $105 annual vehicle pass that covers the rest of the system is explicitly not accepted here, alongside Scarborough Beach, Swan Island, and the Allagash.
Allagash Wilderness Waterway, Maine
Maine's other exception doubles the rate cleanly. Camping on the Allagash runs $6 per person per night for residents and $12 for nonresidents, a straight two-to-one split published in the state's own fee schedule.
Winter parking follows the same logic at $75 a month for residents against $100 for everyone else. Maine is unusually direct about this compared with states that hide the difference inside a registration checkbox.
Michigan
Michigan produces the most striking single comparison on this list, and it is not the ratio that does it.
The Recreation Passport costs Michigan residents $15 for a year, added at license plate renewal, and covers vehicle entry to all 103 state parks and recreation areas plus more than 140 state forest campgrounds and close to a thousand boat launches. The resident price rose by a dollar on January 1, 2026, under a statute that indexes it to the Detroit Consumer Price Index.
Out-of-state plates pay around $42 for the annual version and roughly $11 for a single day. So a visitor's one-day pass costs about three quarters of what a Michigan resident pays for twelve months of access to the entire system.
The trap here catches Michigan residents too. The passport rides the license plate rather than the person, so a Michigander driving a car registered elsewhere pays the nonresident rate. Buying at the gate instead of at renewal also adds five dollars.
Montana
Montana runs the same registration model with an even wider spread on the annual figure.
Residents who check the box pay $9 with their vehicle registration and then owe nothing at the gate all year. Nonresidents pay $8 per entry, or $50 for a twelve-month pass, or $35 for a seven-day pass.
There is a wrinkle that rewards doing the math. The nonresident passes also discount camping by ten to twelve dollars a night depending on site type, so anyone planning more than a couple of nights may come out ahead buying the $50 pass rather than paying per entry.
Indiana
Indiana is the cleanest gate-to-gate comparison in the country because it prices strictly by license plate and posts both numbers side by side.
A noncommercial vehicle with Indiana plates pays $7 for daily entry. The same vehicle with out-of-state plates pays $15. Both figures admit the driver and all passengers, both apply every day including holidays, and the rule covers all state parks and state-managed lakes.
Three properties sit outside that structure: the Falls of the Ohio interpretive center, Prophetstown, and Indiana Dunes. Anyone arriving on foot, by bicycle, or on horseback pays $2 per person aged five and up regardless of where they live, which is the cheapest way into an Indiana state park by a wide margin.
New Jersey
New Jersey applies a flat fifty percent surcharge and applies it consistently.
The State Park Pass runs $50 for residents and $75 for nonresidents, covering a calendar year of entry at parks and forests that charge walk-in or parking fees. A second family vehicle costs $25 for residents and $35 for nonresidents, and it has to be bought at the same time as the first. Both carry a $3 administrative fee.
Worth reading the fine print: the pass does not cover camping, and it does not guarantee entry when a park hits capacity, which the Jersey Shore parks regularly do in July.
South Dakota And Custer State Park
South Dakota requires an entrance license for motor vehicles at designated parks, recreation areas, and lakeside-use areas, and the daily version runs $10 for residents against $15 for nonresidents.
Custer opts out of that structure. The park sells a separate $25 temporary license valid for seven days and does not offer the ordinary daily license at all, which means a single afternoon at Custer costs the same as a week.
Neither the daily nor the annual license covers the George S. Mickelson Trail, which sells its own pass.
Hawaii
Most Hawaii state parks are free to everyone, but the flagship sites use the sharpest resident distinction in the country after Baxter.
At Diamond Head State Monument, Hawaii residents enter and park free with valid identification. Nonresidents pay $5 per person plus $10 per vehicle, and advance reservations are required. Haena and Waianapanapa use similar splits.
One rule catches families every year. Traveling with a Hawaii resident does not extend the exemption to you. Out-of-state visitors in a resident's car still book and pay for themselves.
How To Avoid Paying The Premium Twice
Four habits cover almost every case.
Check whether the fee follows the plate or the person, because in Michigan and Indiana it is the plate, and a rental car changes your rate in both directions. Do the annual-versus-daily math before you arrive, since Montana's $50 nonresident pass beats four separate entries and Michigan's crosses over at about four days. Assume the pass does not cover camping, because in most of these systems it does not. And check whether the specific park opts out, as Custer, Baxter, and the Allagash all do.
The simplest workaround is to go somewhere that never split the price list. Illinois, Tennessee, Pennsylvania, and Missouri are among roughly ten states charging no general entrance fee at all, to residents or anyone else.
