Since 1872, when President Ulysses S. Grant signed the bill establishing Yellowstone as the first national park, nearly 15 decades have passed. With the latest addition of New River Gorge in 2020, the United States now boasts 63 diverse, wildlife-rich, and truly breathtaking national parks.
During my pandemic hibernation era, I watched one of my favorite documentaries - The National Parks: America’s Best Idea by Ken Burns. It took me on an emotional journey to better understand, and appreciate how the national park system was conceived, established, and expanded. I came away with a profound admiration for the generations of visionaries - like John Muir - who relentlessly championed this quintessentially American and democratic ideal.
I often joke with my friends - though it’s really quite true - that my favorite people in this world are park rangers. I admire their unwavering passion and commitment to preserving nature, and their eagerness to connect park goers with the wonders of the outdoors. It’s heartwarming to see the pride and excitement they show when recommending their favorite trails or describing the wildlife I might encounter. Gosh, I love them so much.
Location
To better visualize where these parks are, I created a heatmap (see Exhibit 1) showing all 61 national parks across the 50 U.S. states, excluding the U.S. territories (American Samoa and the U.S. Virgin Islands each has one).
Exhibit 1: number of national parks by state (excluding U.S. territories); Source: nps.gov
Not surprisingly, most national parks are located in the western United States. However, I hadn’t realized just how much California and Alaska dominate, with 9 and 8 parks respectively - together accounting for more than a quarter of the total. Meanwhile, the eastern side - especially the Northeast - feels like a national park desert, with Acadia in Maine as the lone exception.
Notably, of the 50 U.S. states, 19 - approximately 2/5 - do not contain any national parks. These voids are primarily found in three regions: the Northeast, the Deep South, and the Heartland.
Exhibit 2 highlights the states with the most national parks. After California and Alaska, Utah ranks next with 5, followed by Colorado with 4, and Florida, Arizona, and Washington tied at 3. These are indeed the states where we typically associate with nature and outdoor activities.
Exhibit 2: states with the most national parks; Source: nps.gov
I’d also like to highlight that four national parks span multiple states, and the heatmap above counts each of these parks once in each state. So, if you add up the numbers by state, the total should come to 66 (= 63 national parks + 5 additional states - 2 U.S. territories).
Death Valley in California and Nevada
Gateway Arch in Missouri and Illinois
Great Smoky Mountains in North Carolina and Tennessee
Yellowstone in Idaho, Montana, and Wyoming
Popularity
Among all 63 national parks, which ones draw the most visitors, and which see the fewest? The 2024 full-year recreation visit data was released not long ago, and I’ve done some digging.
Exhibit 3 shows the top 10 parks by recreation visits in 2024. Unsurprisingly, familiar names like Zion, Grand Canyon, Yellowstone, and Yosemite dominate the list.
Exhibit 3: NPs with the most recreation visits in 2024; Source: nps.gov
However, I was astonished to see that Great Smoky Mountains - at number one - drew about 2.5 times more visitors than Zion, which came in second. The National Park Service attributes this high visitation to the park’s strategic location, explaining: “... it lies within a day’s drive of more than half the U.S. population and thus offers the opportunity for tens of millions of people to have a national park experience close to home...”
I personally believe that, beyond the massive population base, the relative scarcity of other national parks in the Deep South region also contributes to Great Smoky Mountains’ high visitation - especially compared to Yosemite, which is surrounded by numerous other natural wonders nearby. Acadia’s spot in the top 10 list may stem from similar factors as the lone national park in the entire Northeast region.
Another surprising fact is that both Mount Rainier and Olympic are in Washington, yet Olympic drew more than double the recreation visits - 3.7 million versus Mount Rainier’s 1.6 million in 2024 - even though I’ve always thought Mount Rainier was more widely recognized.
Now, taking a look at the 10 national parks with the fewest recreation visits in 2024 (shown in Exhibit 4), I intentionally used the same y-axis scale to highlight the stark contrast with the top 10 most visited parks, even though the bars are barely visible. Great Smoky Mountains, for instance, saw more than a thousand times the visitors of Gates of the Arctic, which had less than 12,000 recreation visitors in 2024.
Exhibit 4: NPs with the fewest recreation visits in 2024; Source: nps.gov
Remoteness is clearly the greatest factor of their “unpopularity.” Of the 10 least visited national parks, 5 are in Alaska, 1 is in American Samoa, Dry Tortugas in Florida is located far offshore, and Isle Royale sits on Lake Superior - closer to Canada than to the U.S. lakeshore.
Evolution
Over the past decades, how has each park’s popularity evolved? To find out, I analyzed each national park’s recreation visit data from 2005 through 2024 - a 20-year span - to see how they’ve grown or declined in annual visitor numbers. The results are summarized in Exhibit 5, which highlights both the top and bottom 10 parks according to these changes.
Exhibit 5: NPs with the highest vs. lowest growth rates of recreation visits in the past two decades; Source: nps.gov
A few fun facts that caught my eyes in the top 10 list:
American Samoa saw a remarkable 1,700% jump in visits during this period. Despite the impressive growth, its 2024 total is still among the lowest - fifth from the bottom. Note that 2005 data for American Samoa isn’t available on nps.gov, so I used 2006 instead; this should minimally affect the analysis.
Congaree was designated a national park in late 2003, which likely helped boost its visitation afterward.
Alaska lands three spots in the top 10 (Kobuk Valley, Lake Clark, and Glacier Bay). Given that Alaska has 9 national parks (the most of any state), having one-third of them in the top 10 is double the proportion of Alaskan parks overall (1/6).
Utah shines even more brightly, with three of its five parks (Capitol Reef, Bryce Canyon, and Canyonlands) appearing in the top 10 - a notable achievement.
Of the top 10 parks, three - Capitol Reef, Bryce Canyon, and Joshua Tree - exceeded one million annual visitors in 2024. Reaching such growth rates at that scale is particularly impressive.
In total, 15 national parks experienced a drop in their annual visits from 2005 to 2024, which was surprising.
Mammoth Cave in Kentucky suffered the largest decline at about 60%. In fact, between 2005 and 2006, its visitation plummeted by 1.3 million, baffling officials at the time and prompting further investigation. Since then, annual recreational visitor numbers have never remotely approached 1 million.
Haleakalā’s decline in visitors - second from the bottom - is likely tied to the Maui fires of 2023, and the island’s recovery is still ongoing. While Hawaiʻi Volcanoes is also located in Hawaii - on the Big Island - it was likely less affected, leaving the reason for its visitor decline unknown.
Aside from Mammoth Cave and Haleakalā, Everglades is the only other park whose annual recreation visits have dropped below one million compared to 20 years ago.
Zooming out to consider the aggregated recreation visit data for all 63 national parks over the same period (see Exhibit 6), the fluctuations are quite dramatic - some are predictable, while others are less intuitive.
Exhibit 6: total recreation visits of all NPs from 2005 through 2024; Source: nps.gov
First things first, let’s look at 2020. COVID-19 began affecting daily life in the U.S. around early to mid-March, followed by nationwide lockdowns. Unsurprisingly, the total annual recreation visits to all 63 national parks dropped significantly compared to 2019 - down by exactly 25%. However, I have to admit, the roughly 68 million visits are still higher than I would have expected.
The first thing that surprised me was the pronounced peak in 2021 and subsequent dip in 2022. From news reports, social media, and my own experiences, I’ve seen national parks become increasingly popular among Americans and international travelers, serving as a gateway to nature - especially after the pandemic. I had expected annual recreation visits to keep climbing post-2020, rather than dropping in 2022. However, on reflection, the decline also makes sense: in 2021, global vaccine rollouts were underway, and countries like Japan - popular tourist hotspots - remained in lockdown. This naturally funneled travelers away from urban or overseas destinations and toward domestic outdoor settings, and what’s more appealing than a national park? I personally visited five that year, including Yellowstone, Rocky Mountain, and Hawaiʻi Volcanoes - oh boy, weren’t they crowded.
Another eye-catching data point is the remarkable growth from 2013, with 69 million recreation visits, to 2016, which saw 88 million - a 27% increase in just three years. I’ll need to do more research into the root causes, but I suspect that social media (particularly Instagram) has played a critical role in fueling the parks’ popularity.
Overall, I’m thrilled to see a steady rise in recreation visits to national parks over the past two decades, culminating in an all-time high of 94.3 million visits in 2024.
I’d like to note that although some parks were only designated as national parks after 2005, their recreation visit data is still available for the 2005 - 2024 period. The single exception is the National Park of American Samoa in 2005; however, since its annual recreational visitors have never exceeded 10,000 in subsequent years, its absence should have a minimal impact on the overall trend.
Online Fandom
As I mentioned earlier, social media likely plays a major role in boosting the popularity of national parks. With that in mind, I pulled each park’s Instagram follower count (as of February 11, 2025) to get a rough snapshot of their online presence. Exhibit 7 shows the top national parks with the most Instagram followers, revealing no major surprises but a few noteworthy observations:
Yellowstone stands out with by far the largest following, at nearly twice that of Zion, which ranks third.
I was genuinely surprised to see Glacier outranking Grand Canyon, taking fourth place.
Of course, this is a very basic way of gauging each park’s online popularity, since the number of Instagram followers also depends on how well each park manages its online content. Moreover, follower counts primarily represent reactive engagement (people choosing to follow) rather than active user engagement, like the number of posts geotagged to each park.
A few additional nuances about the Instagram data:
Gates of the Arctic does not have an official Instagram account.
Sequoia and Kings Canyon share the same Instagram account because of their proximity.
Oh and a fun fact: The official National Park Service account follows all individual parks - except Gates of the Arctic. What’s the beef between the two?
Exhibit 7: NPs with the most Instagram followers; Source: Instagram (as of 2/11/2025)
After reviewing each park’s total Instagram followers, I wondered whether their online presence mirrored real-world foot traffic. To dig deeper, I created an “online vs. reality” index by dividing each park’s Instagram followers by its 2024 recreation visits. Parks with a higher index score have a stronger online following compared to their in-person visitation - and vice versa.
Exhibit 8 shows the top and bottom 10 parks with the highest and lowest online vs. reality index. Many of these parks rank high simply because they saw relatively few visitors in 2024, such as North Cascades, which tops the list and had the second-lowest annual visitation (16,500) among all 63 parks. Meanwhile, Denali and Kings Canyon are probably the only two “major” parks to appear in the top 10 even though none of these parks has over 1 million recreation visits in 2024.
Exhibit 8: NPs with the highest and lowest Instagram followers / 2024 recreation visits ratio; Source: nps.gov and Instagram (as of 2/11/2025)
Now let’s turn our attention to the bottom 10 national parks with the lowest online vs. reality index. With the exceptions of White Sands and Virgin Islands, all of these parks had over 1 million recreation visits in 2024 - especially Great Smoky Mountains, which dwarfs the others. Meanwhile, Instagram users don’t seem particularly enamored with Gateway Arch’s account - and, honestly, who can blame them?
Other notable observations about the online vs. reality index not shown in Exhibit 8 include:
Yosemite ranks the highest (12th) among parks with over 1 million visits in 2024, followed by Yellowstone (18th) and Glacier (19th).
Olympic had more than twice as many visitors as Mount Rainier in 2024, yet Mount Rainier, with 430,000 Instagram followers, ranks 22nd - far ahead of Olympic’s 51st place and its 372,000 followers.
Land Size
The 63 national parks vary dramatically in size. In Exhibit 9, the dot size and color together offer a relative comparison of each park’s acreage (excluding American Samoa and the U.S. Virgin Islands).
Exhibit 9: NP area size; Source: nps.gov
Observations and some fun stats include:
Alaska dominates in terms of sheer size: 7 of the top 10 largest national parks are located there, which isn’t surprising given that Alaska itself is about one-fifth the size of the entire Lower 48.
Wrangell–St. Elias, spanning 8.3 million acres, holds the title of the largest national park in the U.S. To put that in perspective, it’s larger than the smallest 47 national parks combined.
In the contiguous U.S., Death Valley - spread across California and Nevada - is the largest national park.
At just 193 acres, Gateway Arch (still puzzlingly categorized as a national park) is the smallest of them all.
Now let’s examine how crowded each park is by dividing their 2024 recreation visits by park size, as shown in Exhibit 10. The bottom 10 on the list represent the least crowded parks:
Unsurprisingly, most of the bottom 10 are among the largest parks - mostly in Alaska. However, it's interesting that Isle Royale and North Cascades, which aren’t in the top 10 largest parks, still make the least crowded list.
Despite being the largest national park, Wrangell-St. Elias is actually more crowded than Lake Clark and Gates of the Arctic - all three are located in Alaska.
Exhibit 10: NPs with the highest vs. lowest 2024 recreation visits per acre; Source: nps.gov
The top 10 most crowded parks follow a similar pattern:
Gateway Arch takes the crown as the most crowded park - with over 2.5 million recreational visitors in 2024 and less than 200 acres of land, it’s hardly surprising.
Although smaller parks tend to be more crowded, four of the top 10 most crowded aren’t among the 10 smallest parks. This includes Acadia, Bryce Canyon, Zion, and Great Smoky Mountains. Notably, Great Smoky Mountains - ranked as the 19th largest park—makes the list due to its exceptionally high visitor numbers in 2024.
I fully understand that this is a very basic way to measure crowdedness, as the overall park size doesn’t directly translate to the area accessible to visitors. For instance, Denali is the 3rd largest national park at approximately 4.7 million acres, yet it has only one main road (Denali Park Road) that visitors can use, meaning the actual accessible area is much smaller.
End
Salute to the park rangers, and salute to America’s best idea.
Appendix
Exhibit 11: NP data used in this essay; Source: nps.gov and Instagram (as of 2/11/2025)