These visitors enjoying a boat tour of Crater Lake last summer were among a record 292.8 million visitors to the National Park System in 2014/Kurt Repanshek
2014 was a record-setting year for attendance in the National Park System, where nearly 293 million visitors spent time, a jump of more than 5 million from the record year of 1999, according to official figures. While most of the "name brand" parks were packed, there were still some sites in the system where you could find some solitude.
For instance, while more than 15 million visited Golden Gate National Recreation Area and nearly 14 million spent time along the Blue Ridge Parkway, places such as Bering Land Bridge National Preserve in Alaska, the Rio Grand Wild and Scenic River in Texas, and the Port Chicago Naval Magazine National Monument in California were among the 10 least-visited units of the system.
'As the National Park Service strives to share a more inclusive and well-rounded version of the American story through the places we care for, it is gratifying to see more people than ever coming to their national parks to enjoy nature, learn about history, and spend time with their families,' said National Park Service Director Jonathan B. Jarvis in a prepared statement. 'As we look ahead to our centennial in 2016, I am looking forward to announcing a new record-breaking number of visitors coming to experience national parks next year and beyond.'
The official number of recreational visits to national parks in 2014 was 292,800,082 -- an increase of 19 million, or seven percent, from 2013 visitation of 273,630,895. Visitation in 2014 rebounded from a 2013 decline that resulted, in part, from a 16-day government shutdown and many park closures for repairs after Superstorm Sandy hit the Northeast in late 2012.
'Visitor spending in the communities near national parks supports hundreds of thousands of mostly local jobs in America year after year,' Director Jarvis said. 'With this record visitation we should see something on the order of $15 billion in visitor spending, 250,000 or more jobs and a $28 billion effect on the U.S. economy when our annual economics of national parks report comes out in April.'
Several national parks saw record-breaking visitation in 2014, including Joshua Tree, Rocky Mountain, Grand Teton and Glacier national parks. The re-opening of the Washington Monument, some 21 months after it was rocked by an earthquake and repaired, also added to 2014 visitation numbers.
Of the 405 parks in the national park system, 369 of them track visitors, and the top 28 most-visited parks accounted for half of 2014 visitation and half of the increase in visits between 2013 and 2014.
Grand Canyon National Park bumped Delaware Water Gap National Recreation Area out of the top 10 most visited areas in the national park system. The list of top ten national parks remains unchanged, although Rocky Mountain and Olympic national parks switched places.
Here are the top 10 most-visited places in the National Park System for 2014:
Golden Gate National Recreation Area
15,004,420
13,941,749
Great Smoky Mountains National Park
10,099,276
George Washington Memorial Parkway
7,472,150
7,139,072
Lake Mead National Recreation Area
6,942,873
Gateway National Recreation Area
6,021,713
5,846,474
Chesapeake & Ohio Canal National Historical Park
5,066,219
4,756,771
The top 10 most-visited national parks in 2014:
Great Smoky Mountains National Park
10,099,276
4,756,771
3,882,642
3,513,484
3,434,751
3,243,872
3,189,696
2,791,392
2,563,129
2,338,528
For people who want to share their park experience with fewer fellow visitors, the 10 parks with the lowest number of visitors last year are:
Salt River Bay National Historical Park & Ecological Preserve, Virgin Islands
Alibates Flint Quarries National Monument, Texas
Nicodemus National Historic Site, Kansas
Eugene O'Neill National Historic Site, California
Bering Land Bridge National Preserve, Alaska
Yukon-Charley Rivers National Preserve, Alaska
Thaddeus Kosciuszko National Memorial, Pennsylvania
Port Chicago Naval Magazine National Monument, California
Rio Grande Wild and Scenic River, Texas
Aniakchak National Monument and Preserve, Alaska
The National Park Service has been counting visitors since 1916. Including the 2014 figures, the all-time visitation at National Park Service sites exceeds 13.2 billion. The complete list of park visitation and other visitor-related statistics are available on the National Park Service's web site https://irma.nps.gov/Stats/
Comments
Jarvis attempts to "pad his numbers" in advance of congressional legislation regarding FLREA is laughable. We have documented proof that they have fudged visitation numbers in the Great Smoky Mtns National Park so I have little doubt that he has exerted pressure to manufacture the same bloated stats elsewhere. Just more manipulation in order to cry for more money from taxpayers. Unless people question the veracity of this data, it goes unchecked. We have been conducting a detailed analysis of numbers in the Smokies backcountry, for example and guess what? Yep, major discrepancies. We have asked the NPS for revenue related to the increase in numbers and they have been unable to produce that information. Convenient, huh? I advise folks in other regions to dig through the NPS spin and start asking questions about your local units.
Do you also suggest that we call ourselves an unidentified 'we'?
You sound a bit like McCarthy waving a piece of paper around with a list of names on it.
Too much emphasis, frankly, is put into the numbers. They are too soft to give anything more than a ballpark estimate.
For instance, the Cape Hatteras count no doubt was down because the seashore was closed by a hurricane over the typically busy July 4th holiday weekend, and at least two of the ramps' counters failed to record numbers because the batteries had died. How might those actual numbers affected the overall count?
At Great Smoky, how do they adjust their tally for commercial traffic crossing the park? In August 2013 eight of the park's counters were inoperable, so how was that taken into account when comparing 2014 to 2013, or 2013 to 2012?
At Shenandoah, backcountry use is counted on a four-year average.
Many other parks also use estimates in their tallies.
It's nice to know hundreds of millions of people are visiting the parks, but to make a big deal out of an estimate...well, let's not get too excited. If campgrounds were empty in July and August, if Everglades was a ghost town in December and January, if Yosemite had plenty of elbow room in May and June after a heavy snow year, those would be instances to get concerned about.
These ramp counters are only a recent new data point, so I have no idea how one could actually compare year to year visitation. They used to use traffic counters on highway 12 and some formula. Regardless, visitation continues to fall based on observations of businesses on the island.
Is there counts for just campgrounds?
As expected park visitation continues to fall at Cape Hatteras National Seashore Recreational Area since the unreasonable management plan was implemented. I am sure the folks at the SELC and NPCA are so proud.
This comment was edited to remove gratuitous wording.--Ed.
I didn't use the word "folks" by the way and it was replaced by the Ed. It was not profanity but was negative.
No question visitation numbers are an estimate, but they are at least based on a system instead of a complete guess. However, for all who are so quick to toss more stones, what are your suggestions for better methods that won't cost a lot more money?
I'd bet parks would be happy to quit collecting such numbers at all, but the politicians who make budget decisions have a bean-counter mentality, and insist on such figures as one way to quantify "results" for apporpriated dollars.
So that justifies cooking the books, JThomas? Sure seems to be the NPS mindset.
And for the record, I am part of an organization that acts as a watchdog in these type of situations, specifically in the south. It is a 150 member group called the Southern Forest Watch. We have busted the NPS in multiple data manufacturing scenarious. We are accumulating data in refutation of NPS assertions about visitation. And it "aint' adding up".