The U.S. National Park System announced 44 locations had record visitation in 2021, although numbers across the entire National Park System remained below pre-2020 totals.
Of 423 parks in the National Park System, more than half the total 297.1 million recreation visits in 2021 came at just 25 parks. Last year’s visitation increased by 60 million over 2020.
National Park Service Director Chuck Sams commended the continued use of national parks.
“We are happy to see so many visitors returning to iconic parks like Yellowstone and Yosemite, but there are hundreds more that should be on everyone’s bucket list,” Sams said. “Whatever experience you are looking for in 2022, national parks are here to discover.”
The park systems 2021 visitation report found 44 parks set a record for recreation visits in 2021, and six parks broke a visitation record set in 2020.
Blue Ridge Parkway remained the most-visited park in the National Park System, although the Great Smoky Mountains National Park set a visitation record in 2021 and passed 14 million recreation visits for the first time.
Recreation visitor hours dipped from 1.43 billion in 2019 to 1.36 billion in 2021, a 5% decrease.
Other data featured in the report includes:
- 297,115,406 recreation visits
- 1,356,657,749 recreation visitor hours
- 12,745,455 overnight stays (recreation + non-recreation)
Three parks had more than 10 million recreation visits – Blue Ridge Parkway, Great Smoky Mountains National Park and Golden Gate National Recreation Area. Eleven parks recorded over 5 million recreation visits – up from seven parks in 2020 and equal to 2019.
Another 73 parks had more than 1 million recreation visits (19% of reporting parks) – up from 60 parks in 2020 and down from 80 in 2019. However, a quarter of all recreation visits occurred in the top eight most-visited parks (2% of all parks in the National Park System).
