The full moon, also called the Beaver Moon, rises over the Lincoln Memorial at sunset in Washington, Monday, November 7, 2022.
J. David Ake/AP
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J. David Ake/AP
The full moon, also called the Beaver Moon, rises over the Lincoln Memorial at sunset in Washington, Monday, November 7, 2022.
J. David Ake/AP
Visitation to US national parks and memorials is beginning to return to pre-COVID-19 levels.
The National Park Service, which publishes federal parks, monuments, and historic sites abroad your annual visit figuresand there were about 312 million attendees in 2022, a 5% increase from the previous year and a 4.7% decrease from 2019 before the coronavirus swept the country.
These were the most visited sites across the country in 2022.
The 10 most visited
- Blue Ridge Parkway, 15.7 million
- Golden Gate National Recreation Area, 15.6 million
- Great Smoky Mountains National Park, 12.9 million
- Gateway National Recreation Area, 8.7 million
- Lincoln Memorial, 7.8 million
- George Washington Memorial Parkway, 7.4 million
- Natchez Trace Parkway, 6.5 million
- Gulf Islands National Seashore, 5.7 million
- Lake Mead National Recreation Area, 5.6 million
- Vietnam Veterans Memorial, 4.9 million
Visitors to the eight major parks accounted for 26% of total visits. Some of the lesser-visited sites include the John F. Kennedy National Historic Site, the Frederick Douglass National Historic Site, and the Clara Barton National Historic Site.
Other notable parks, such as the Grand Canyon, Yosemite, and Yellowstone ranked 12th, 20th, and 25th, respectively.
38% of people went to recreational parks, 32% to historical and cultural parks and 30% to natural parks.
Since the agency began tracking attendance in 1904, there have been 15.7 billion recreational visits to the National Park System.
