The Great Smoky Mountains National Park is the most visited park in the United States, by a significant amount. In 2017, the Smoky Mountains had 11.3 million visitors, which is double the second most visited park, the Grand Canyon. This data only includes recreational visitor data; if non-recreational visitor statistics were included (which includes people driving through the park, maintenance, employees, etc.), 2017 would have seen 20+ million visitors. Gates of the Arctic is America’s northern most park, as well as one of the most remote (there are no roads to get to the park). They had 11,000 visitors in 2017.

Several individual parks have interesting visitor statistic trends. Most of the parks have seen increasing attendance over time; however some have seen spikes or drops in attendance. Out of curiosity, I did some research into some of the more dramatic spikes.

In 1990, Acadia dropped dramatically from 5.5 million yearly visitors to a little over 2 million. Acadia warned the public it had a pollution problem in 1989 which most likely caused the drop in attendance for years to come. A few parks also experienced drops in attendance due to natural disasters. Biscayne National Park in Florida experienced a huge drop in attendance after Hurricane Andrew in 1992. Hawaii Volcanoes National Park also saw a decrease in attendance after the 1984 eruption of Mauna Loa. Katmai National Park has also experienced several volcanic eruptions and has one of the most inconsistent visitation trends out of all of the parks. One of the most fascinating spikes was in Channel Islands National Park in 1994. Archaeologists excavated pristine fossils of the pygmy mammoth, resulting in a 300% increase in visitation in only one year.

Unlike most parks, Shenandoah National Park and Carlsbad Caverns have had a declining population trend over the past 30 years. However both have been steadily increasing since 2010.

Some other parks have interesting trends, but I could not determine reasons for the drops and spikes in attendance. North Cascades had a record high attendance of about one million visitors in 1978 and then attendance began dropping. Since 1990, annual visitation in the park has remained constant at around 25,000 visitors. Hot Springs National Park and Wind Cave also have some dramatic spikes, but I could not find any correlations. (If you have any ideas for the anomalies in these park’s trends please let me know in the comments!)