This is my first post in over a year (I had a baby). I remain interested in National Parks from a distance, and it felt good to dive into the National Park Service ("NPS") visitor use statistics again. Let's get started.
Total Recreation Visits by Year
The NPS now encompasses 424 individual units, including 63 National Parks, 83 National Monuments, 74 National Historic Sites, and more. Together, these NPS units recorded over 311 million total recreation visits in 2022, which was about a five percent increase from 2021.
For the 63 National Parks, 2022 total visit was about 4 percent lower than in 2021.
The remainder of this post will focus on the National Parks.
Top 10 Most Visited National Parks
Some of our most popular national parks saw big changes in visitation in 2022, for one reason or another.
The perennial favorite, Great Smoky Mountains, recorded 2 millions fewer visitors in 2022 compared to 2021 (a decrease of 8 percent). Reading over their monthly visitation comments, it looks like they had counter issues for much of the year. Nonetheless, they retained their top spot on the list.
The Grand Canyon reclaimed its #2 spot for the first time since 2019 with 4.73 million visitors, edging out Zion's 4.69 million visitors. Zion was another park that saw a decrease in visitation in 2022, recording about 4 percent fewer visitors compared to 2021. Some reports suggested that economic factors, such as inflation and high gas prices, were behind the decrease in visitation.
Another favorite, Yellowstone, suffered a major drop in visitation due to destructive flooding in June and July. They recorded over 30 percent fewer visitors in 2022 than in 2021.
Yosemite saw one of the biggest increases in visitation among the most popular parks last year, recording over 11 percent more visitors in 2022 than in 2021. Another popular park to see a double-digit percentage increase in visitors was Cuyahoga Valley, which entered the Top 10 list for the first time with over 13 percent more visitors in 2022 than in 2021.
Parks that dropped out of the Top 10 from 2021 to 2022 were Indiana Dunes and Grand Teton.
The chart below shows 2022's Top 10 most visited national parks with their 2021 and 2022 visitor counts.
Is the pandemic over for National Parks?
While many national parks saw record visitation in 2021, others waited until 2022 to see a closer return to pre-pandemic numbers. In 2022, 14 National Parks saw over 20 percent increases in visitation between 2021 and 2022, and half of these parks are in Alaska (Glacier Bay, Denali, Kobuk Valley, Katmai, Wrangell-St. Elias, Gates of the Arctic) or Hawaii (Haleakala and Hawaii Volcanoes). However, most of these parks still saw fewer visitors in 2022 than before the pandemic (2019).
There are a few National Parks that saw significant increases in popularity in 2022 (compared to both 2021 and 2019), and these were Mammoth Cave (up 29 percent from 2021 and 20 percent from 2019), Hawaii Volcanoes (up 25 percent from 2021 and 16 percent from 2019), Hot Springs (up 22 percent from 2021 and 80 percent from 2019), and Cuyahoga Valley (up 13 percent from 2021 and 30 percent from 2019).
What's next for National Parks?
In the last 10 years, visitation at the National Parks has increased in 28 percent, and the popularity of National Parks doesn't seem to be slowing down. In recent years, many national parks have been dealing with issues of overcrowding. In response, some parks, including Acadia, Arches, Glacier, and Rocky Mountain, implemented timed entry reservation systems. Zion implemented a lottery reservation system for its dangerously congested hike, Angel's Landing. Still, these stricter measures impact a very small portion of public lands, and there are still many beautiful places that are open to visit anytime.
Other than overcrowding, littering, and vandalism, another issue has been raised with National Parks claiming to protect lands that once belonged to native peoples, and some parks have made an effort to acknowledge their land's history. I would like to see these parks appreciated for everything they have to offer, including both outdoor opportunities, lessons in nature and climate change, and native heritage.
