Top 10 Most Visited National Parks And NPS Sites

Visitors are returning to national parks — and to the recreation areas, memorials, battlefields and other sites watched over by the National Park Service.

Those 424 sites saw 312 million recreation visits in 2022. That was an increase of 15 million visits from the year before, according to new figures released by the park service. It's also a jump of nearly 75 million visits from 2020 during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. Still, 2022 numbers were not as high as 2018 and 2019 — 318 million and 327 million recreation visits, respectively.

The park service's 63 national parks saw nearly 89 million recreation visits in 2022.

Top 10 Most Visited National Parks

1. Great Smoky Mountains National Park, 12.94 million

2. Grand Canyon National Park, 4.73 million

3. Zion National Park, 4.69 million

4. Rocky Mountain National Park, 4.3 million

5. Acadia National Park, 3.97 million

6. Yosemite National Park, 3.67 million

7. Yellowstone National Park, 3.29 million

8. Joshua Tree National Park, 3.06 million

9. Cuyahoga Valley National Park, 2.91 million

10. Glacier National Park, 2.91 million

Interestingly, the National Park Service's most visited site in 2022 isn't exactly a park. It's a 469-mile stretch of road running from the Shenandoah National Park, near Waynesboro, Virginia, to the western tip of North Carolina.

Top 10 Most Visited National Park Sites

2. Golden Gate National Recreation Area, 15.64 million

3. Great Smoky Mountains National Park, 12.94 million

4. Gateway National Recreation Area, 8.73 million

5. Lincoln Memorial, 7.83 million

6. George Washington Memorial Parkway, 7.4 million

7. Natchez Trace Parkway, 6.54 million

8. Gulf Islands National Seashore, 5.69 million

9. Lake Mead National Recreation Area, 5.58 million

10. Vietnam Veterans Memorial, 4.89 million

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