The most popular national parks get visitors galore. But what about the other end of the attendance spectrum, the end that is anchored by the system's least-visited parks? From the attendance point of view, you might say that these are lonely parks dwelling in the deep shadows cast by their more celebrated brethren. Let's shed some light on them.
The National Park Service's attendance data for 2010 reveal that 69 National Park System units attracted a million or more visitors. After allowing for some double counting (the Park Service has a very quirky way of counting NPS units), it remains that more than 60 NPS units cracked the million-visitor threshold last year.
Against this background, it's hard to believe that each of 23 NPS units -- nearly 6 percent of the National Park System's 394 units -- attracted fewer than 10,000 visitors last year. The total attendance of this bottom tier was 77,825. That's less than 0.3 percent of last year's system-wide visitation of 281.3 million, or about the number of people who visited Death Valley National Park during the month of February last year.
Here is the roster of the 2010 cellar-dwellers (2010 attendance in parentheses):
* Hamilton Grange National Memorial (0)
* Aniakchak National Monument & Aniakchak National Preserve (62)
* Salt River Bay National Historical Park & Ecological Preserve (204)
* Port Chicago Naval Magazine National Memorial (984)
* Rio Grande Wild & Scenic River (1,103)
* Eugene O'Neill National Historic Site (2,445)
* Cape Krusenstern National Monument (2,521)
* Bering Land Bridge National Preserve (2,642)
* Thaddeus Kosciuszko National Memorial (2,888)
* National Park of American Samoa (3,006)
* Kobuk Valley National Park (3,164)
* Noatak National Preserve (3,257)
* Frederick Law Olmsted National Historic Site (3,285)
* Nicodemus National Historic Site (3,448)
* Sand Creek Massacre National Historic Site (4,063)
* Alibates Flint Quarries National Monument (4,350)
* Thomas Stone National Historic Site (6,004)
* Yukon-Charley Rivers National Preserve (6,211)
* First Ladies National Historic Site (8,766)
* Lake Clark National Park & Preserve (9,931)
* Fort Bowie National Historic Site (9,491)
Attendance data are aggregated for Aniakchak National Monument and Aniakchak National Preserve, even though the National Park Service counts them as two separate units of the National Park System. The same is true for Lake Clark National Park and Lake Clark National Preserve.
Although a strong geographical bias is apparent (two-thirds of these units are west of the Mississippi River, fully one-third are in Alaska, and one is in the South Pacific), the loneliest parks are actually quite a mixed bag. There's room here for legitimate differences of interpretation, but I can see two "special case" units, one group of remote units, and one group of low-interest urban units.
The first special case is Hamilton Grange National Memorial in New York City. The visitation reported for Hamilton Grange shows zero recreational visits for the years 1980-1982, 1993-1997, 2007, and 2010. However, this NPS unit attracted 40,000 annual visitors as recently as 2000 and counted 15,287 visitors in 2005. The wildly fluctuating numbers reflect periodic closings, the most recent of which was made necessary when the historic building that is this park's reason for being was closed for a time and then moved to a new site. Hamilton Grange is scheduled to reopen at its new location in Harlem this year, and visitation can be expected to return to normal levels in due course.
The second special case is Port Chicago Naval Magazine National Memorial, a recently-established park located on US Navy property near Martinez in the San Francisco Bay area. The Port Chicago site, a former Affiliated Area, was redesignated as a National Memorial under National Park Service administration and established in 2009 as America's 392nd national park. The Navy severely restricts public access, making it available only by prior arrangement well in advance.
At least 14 of the reporting units in the bottom tier are in relatively remote locations, being hard to get to or situated outside the day-tripping zones of large population centers. The remote parks are:
* All seven of the Alaska units on the list (none of which has road access)
* National Park of American Samoa
* Salt River Bay National Historical Park & Ecological Preserve (Virgin Islands)
* Rio Grande Wild & Scenic River (Big Bend National Park, Texas; no federal facilities)
* Fort Bowie National Historic Site (Chihuahuan Desert, southeastern Arizona)
* Nicodemus National Historic Site (Great Plains, northwestern Kansas)
* Sand Creek Massacre National Historic Site (Great Plains, east-central Colorado)
* Alibates Flint Quarries National Monument (Great Plains, Texas panhandle)
Five NPS units on the "lonely list" are cultural-historical sites with central city, suburban, or day-tripper locations in major urban regions. Since they enjoy favorable market locations, their lackluster attendance is apparently due to low public interest. This group includes:
* Thaddeus Kosciuszko National Memorial (Philadelphia, PA; it is the smallest NPS unit)
* First Ladies National Historic Site (Canton, OH, home of the Pro Football Hall of Fame)
* Thomas Stone National Historic Site (Port Tobacco, MD, near Washington, DC)
* Frederick Law Olmsted National Historic Site (Brookline, MA, a Boston suburb)
* Eugene O'Neill National Historic Site (Danville, CA, a San Francisco/Oakland suburb)
Qualifying comments are in order for the latter two parks. Eugene O'Neill National Historic Site is open to the public by reservation only (except for certain "No Reservation Saturdays"), and visitors are shuttled to the site for guided tours. Frederick Law Olmsted National Historic Site was closed during part of 2010 due to major preservation project and is not scheduled to reopen until sometime in 2011. Attendance has exceeded 10,000 in only one year (2001) since the park was established in 1979.
The purpose of this report is not to criticize. Visitation is not the sole criterion for measuring the worth of a national park, nor even a necessarily important one. But it is something that matters (else why keep track of it at all?), and strikingly low annual visitation can't help but draw attention.
Of course, low visitation can signal problems. At the very least, National Park Service officials need to ask: Is strikingly low visitation acceptable at [this particular NPS unit]? If it is not, is corrective action in order?
Attendance trends for the low-visitation NPS units, something we have considered only in passing here, also merit attention. Downward-trending numbers may be cause for concern if they persist. At First Ladies National Historic Site, for example, attendance declined 16 percent last year and is down nearly 22 percent since 2006. Of course, some lonely parks have stable or improving numbers. At Frederick Law Olmsted, for example, visitation has rebounded sharply from lows reached in the mid-2000s.
If you'd like to explore the park visitation data more deeply, you'll find the data you need at this NPS Reports site. Remember to be careful when messing around with the visitation statistics for the loneliest parks, since small numerical changes can yield big percentage changes and impacts that may be much more apparent than real. Consider, for instance, the case of Aniakchak National Monument & Preserve, where 2010 attendance was up 443 percent for the year and exceeded the combined total for the three prior years. That looks mighty impressive until you consider that there were just 62 recreational visits in 2010, and a grand total of 50 for the years 2007, 2008, and 2009.
Postscript: Technically, only one of the 58 National Park-designated units -- Kobuk Valley National Park (3,164) -- reported fewer than 10,000 recreational visitors last year. However, it's likely that visitation at Alaska's Gates of the Arctic National Park also fell short of the 10,000 mark. The National Park Service counts Gates of the Arctic National Park and Gates of the Arctic National Preserve as two separate NPS units, but combines them for many reporting purposes, including visitation. Last year's reported visitation for Gates of the Arctic National Park & Preserve was 10,840. For an explanation of the methods the Park Service uses to count visitors at Gates of the Arctic National Park & Preserve, read this document.
Also, it must be remembered that head counting in the parks is not an exact science. Few totals are based on actual counting; most involve mathematical calculations that can vary from season to season, and some rely on mechanical vehicle counters that break down from time to time. As a result, attendance figures are somewhat soft measuring sticks.
Comments
I occasionally mountain bike alongside the Eugene O'Neill Nat'l Historic Site, because it's on a forced detour route adjacent to the eastern border of Las Trampas Regional Wilderness in Danville, Calif.
The Las Trampas preserve suffers from typical East Bay Regional Park District overregulation. Specifically, mountain bikers riding on the Las Trampas Ridge (i.e., the main route) are required to detour down a dirt road with a 40-50% grade and a few miles north climb back up to the ridge. This is to avoid a singletrack that runs along the ridge. It's a rule that, for understandable reasons, is flouted regularly—the off-limits singletrack is popular with cyclists. But if one does take one's life in hand by obeying the absurd rules and half-sliding down the dirt road chute, one arrives almost on the doorstep of the Eugene O'Neill Nat'l Historic Site.
It is a strange place. No one seems to be there. I've walked around its perimeter more than once and have always found it locked up. One does see an NPS vehicle or two parked in its small parking lot at times, but unoccupied. It could be a scene from The Omega Man or The Quiet Earth.
Ah, ha, an explanation: the website says, "Reservations are required to visit this site."
However, it also says, farther down, that beginning May 1, 2010, no-reservation Saturdays will begin, and presumably they have begun. But you can't drive there. You can only be shuttled up by NPS at 10, noon, and 2. I'll try to swing by there on a Saturday mountain bike ride and see if I can be admitted.
Is there an advertising budget for the NPS? Would there be a political uproar if one existed?
I don't mind the numbers for Aniakchak National Monument and the other Alaskan site. Those units are under the NPS cover mainly for protection, not for education or entertainment. Looking at some of the historical units with low to non existing visitation, I am temped to see things differently.
If a cultural/historical museum does not attract visitors, then obviously something is wrong. And consequently it should be fixed of shut down.
Tadeusz Kosciuszko and Thomas Stone seem to be of no national interest anymore. They might have been seen as important figures one time but this aspect faded since. For the First Ladies there never was any interest and the location was an incredibly bad idea from the very beginning.
Let's see if Frederic Law Olmsted can attract the masses again when his museum reopens. His work is important, but obviously not well known or not conntected to his person in the general public or a significant community.
And the terms of access to Eugene O'Neill National Historic Site are a bad joke. I remember the strong rules for visiting the old J. Paul Getty Museum in Malibu in the 90s - they had very limited parking on site and to avoid visitors to park in the residential neighborhood around the museum they allowed visting only with preregistered parking or by public transport, while public transport and Malibu obviously does not really fit. But the Eugene O'Neill Site beat that by a few orders of magnitude. A site that does not want visitors, consequently does not get any. And either they change the terms of access or the NPS should find some other use of the property.
There are so many things that affect visitation at our parks from year to year such as weather patterns, economy, special events, services & reconstruction. For example one winter at Biscayne NP the snorkeling boats were broken therefore visitation plummeted as no one could get out to the reefs! When reflecting on a parks visitation it is important to look at trends that take place over several years versus just looking at one year.
However, with that said, isn't it amazing to know that there are still places like Aniakchak, where we can still find complete solitude and wilderness.
Thaddeus Kosciuszko and Thomas Stone, being American Revolution figures, may become more popular in 15 years when the 250th anniversary arrives. The Stone unit, IIRC, was conceived as part of a plan (wisely abandoned, IMO), to honor all signers of the Declaration of Independence with individual sites. (As to that, why isn't the William Floyd Estate, home to another signer--and part of Fire Island Seashore--a separate national historic site?)
It isn't necessarily bad that historic houses have relatively low annual visitation--the impact of higher use might harm the resource.
Many ages ago I got mad at my parents and refused to get out of the car.
They told me we were going to a National Park, we went to some old house instead...
I think I mentioned it before, but is this the only NPS unit where visitation is restricted to US citizens and permanent residents?
http://www.nps.gov/poch/planyourvisit/feesandreservations.htm
I'm sure they would make an exception for foreign dignitaries or in special cases. Perhaps that could include a descendant of one of the Port Chicago victims.
Both Port Chicago and Eugene O'Neill NHS are pretty close to home, but I've never visited. I have been to John Muir NHS. Apparently they talk about the "secret location" of John Muir's grave, which is somewhere in Martinez. The rangers there talk about it but apparent won't disclose the location. I wonder if the location counts as a seldom visited NPS site?
Yeah - how does one count recreational visitation? I took a look at Rosie the Riveter/World War II Home Front National Historical Park once. I just went to the little display (the Rosie Memorial) in a city park in Richmond, California. Most of the people there were simply sitting on the lawn and didn't seem all that interested in the display. This guy is only riding his bike next to the display.