Shutdown disappoints some Sagamore Hill visitors but preservation society keeps Fire Island lighthouse open

Ten days after the federal government shut down at Sagamore Hill National Historic Site, the lights were on at Theodore Roosevelt’s house, but the doors were locked. Some of the porta-potties down the hill were locked too. No docents or park rangers could be seen.

At Fire Island National Seashore, hundreds of visitors climbed the steps of the tall lighthouse, open because it is staffed by the nonprofit Fire Island Lighthouse Preservation Society, not the National Park Service, but nobody answered the phone at the William Floyd Estate, a National Seashore site in Mastic Beach.

More than a quarter of national park sites across the United States, many of them historical properties, are closed to the public; any facility or area that is typically locked during nonbusiness hours must be lock