Visiting Muir Woods will soon require a reservation

Visitors line up to pay the entrance fee at Muir Woods National Monument in Mill Valley, Calif. on Wednesday, June 29, 2016. The National Park Service is considering a plan to remove a parking lot and reduce a wide pedestrian area at the entrance to the park and restore the natural habitat along nearby Redwood Creek. less Visitors line up to pay the entrance fee at Muir Woods National Monument in Mill Valley, Calif. on Wednesday, June 29, 2016. The National Park Service is considering a plan to remove a parking lot and reduce a ... more Photo: Paul Chinn, The Chronicle Buy photo Photo: Paul Chinn, The Chronicle Image 1 of / 10 Caption Close Visiting Muir Woods will soon require a reservation 1 / 10 Back to Gallery

You will soon need to plan ahead to visit the wildly popular Muir Woods National Monument in Mill Valley.

To manage traffic and crowds, officials will begin capping visitors in 2018 by requiring a reservation to park a vehicle or ride a shuttle bus into the park.

"A visit to Muir Woods should be about the peace of the redwoods, not a battle for parking," says Cicely Muldoon, the park's acting general superintendent. "The reservation system represents a new way to visit Muir Woods that will provide a safe and inspirational experience for visitors and protect these spectacular natural resources. "

With its majestic towering redwoods, the Marin County park is unquestionably beautiful—and also quite popular. More than a million visitors flock to Muir Woods each year and upward of 6,000 people show up on a busy day.

The monument has already developed a shuttle system with Marin Transit to carry visitors between Muir Woods and the Sausalito ferry or overflow parking areas in Mill Valley and Marin City during the busy season, running May through October. Yet still on weekends, a trail of cars is backed up along the twisting Highway 1 and Muir Woods Road leading into the park.

Vehicles pour into the little valley in search of parking. The small parking lot with only 200 spaces fills quickly and then cars search and scramble for road side parking. Visitors park their vehicles haphazardly, often in illegal spots and sometimes on steep inclines. On occasion, cars tumble into the creek, disrupting fragile habitat, as reported previously on SFGATE.

With the new system, daily parking reservation availability will vary by season, from approximately 500 in the low season to 900 in the peak. The park expects about 100,000 shuttle reservations per year.

Even though the change will not be implemented until next year, the park is beginning to spread the news to shift people's thinking on how they plan trips to Muir Woods.

There will still be one way you can enter without a reservation: That's by foot via a hiking trail — likely the way the great naturalist John Muir himself would choose to get there if he were still alive.