MARSHALL — Starting next year, campers at Lyon County parks will need to go online, instead of making campsite payments with cash or check.

This week, county commissioners voted to make all campsites at Garvin Park and Twin Lakes Park available for online reservations.

Lyon County Parks Programming Manager Brooke Kor said the change would help with visitors’ requests for campsite reservations, and help address safety concerns about keeping cash at the campgrounds.

“At our last Park Board meeting, they made a recommendation to move all campsites at Garvin and Twin Lakes to our Firefly online payment system by 2026,” Kor said at Tuesday’s commissioner meeting. “If we were to approve this now, it would give us an entire camping season to let campers know.”

Both Garvin and Twin Lakes Parks currently offer camping reservations through Firefly for a limited number of sites at each campground.

Kor and Lyon County Environmental Administrator Roger Schroeder said they had researched a few different alternatives to cash or check payments for county campsites. The options included expanding use of the Firefly online payment system, or installing self-serve kiosk systems at the parks.

Schroeder said moving to online campsite reservations and payments would address a couple of different concerns from campers and campsite hosts.

“We get some calls from folks that want to know how many campsites are remaining,” Schroeder said. “We’re trying to increase the service that we have for people that might be traveling a distance, and at the same time keeping our local campers able to see what we have available for the weekend.”

There were also possible safety concerns about using cash for campsite reservations, he said.

“There’s several different reasons why we were asked to look into a payment system that would maybe satisfy the types of concerns that we have out there with cash on site,” Schroeder said. “We wouldn’t want either of our campground hosts to have their camper broken into because somebody thinks that there may be cash in those vehicles.”

Moving over to an online payment system would make it easier to communicate with campers by email, Kor said.

“Right now, we’re using a postcard system, and that’s only if we have the campers’ information,” she said. With an online system, she said, “As people are booking (a campsite), we can send out information with the confirmation email, such as park rules, or if we have a hunting season going on or construction in the park.”

Kor said currently, campsites at Garvin and Twin Lakes Parks have a QR code and the link to the Firefly website posted. “So you can either go through our county website to book it, or if you walk in that day . . . you can scan the QR code or type in the website,” Kor said.

Parks staff also researched options like having a self-serve Firefly kiosk or other kiosk services at the park for guests to book a campsite.

“The problem right there, though, is that there’s internet needed, and electric,” she said.

Kor said the cost of installing kiosks would also depend on if they had one at each campground, or just at the main entrance of Garvin and Twin Lakes Parks. Prices for a main entrance kiosk ranged from $5,487 to about $6,318 per kiosk. Having more kiosks would increase the cost to between $23,000 and $27,000.

“One bad thing about using a new kiosk system is it does not talk to our current system, so you would have two separate systems which would not be user friendly,” Kor said.

The Park Board recommended that all campsites be placed on the Firefly online reservation system, Kor said.

Commissioners voted in favor of the proposal.