A reporter asked us what visitation is doing at Arches and Zion now that reservations have eased. Here is the honest answer from the official record. Arches ran a timed-entry pilot in 2022, 2023, and 2024, ran it again in 2025, then suspended it for about seven weeks in mid-summer 2025, and for 2026 dropped the requirement entirely. Through it all, Arches visitation has stayed flat and remains below its 2019 level. Zion is a different story: it never used a park-wide reservation, and it keeps setting near-record numbers. One caveat up front: the complete NPS visitation record currently runs through December 2025, so 2026, the first full year with no Arches timed entry, cannot be measured yet.
Utah's five national parks, recreation visits
Total Recreation Visits from the NPS Visitor Use Statistics Data Package, 2025. The five-year average covers 2021-2025. Percent change compares 2025 with the 2019 pre-pandemic year. Counts are visits, not unique people.
| Park | 2019 | 2024 | 2025 | 2025 vs 2019 | 5-yr avg (2021-25) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Zion NPUT - National Park | 4,488,268 | 4,946,592 | 4,984,525 | +11.1% | 4,857,321 |
| Bryce Canyon NPUT - National Park | 2,594,904 | 2,498,075 | 1,967,367 | -24.2% | 2,277,194 |
| Arches NPUT - National Park | 1,659,702 | 1,466,528 | 1,511,740 | -8.9% | 1,545,566 |
| Capitol Reef NPUT - National Park | 1,226,519 | 1,422,490 | 1,388,476 | +13.2% | 1,342,558 |
| Canyonlands NPUT - National Park | 733,996 | 818,492 | 796,057 | +8.5% | 821,122 |
Arches: annual recreation visits, 2015-2025
All five Utah parks: 2025 vs the five-year average
Summer's share of the year is shrinking at every Utah park
How this was computed
Source dataset. National Park Service Visitor Use Statistics Data Package, 2025. The statistic is Total Recreation Visits (TRV), available through the NPS Visitor Use Statistics portal and the 2025 Data.gov package. Every figure here is a sum of monthly recreation visits for the calendar year shown.
Window and coverage. All five parks have complete twelve-month data for every year from 2015 through 2025, so annual totals are directly comparable. The five-year average covers 2021 through 2025. The most recent complete year in the published record is 2025; 2026 monthly counts are not yet available, so we do not estimate them.
Arches timed-entry timeline. Arches ran a pilot timed-entry (vehicle reservation) system from April through October in 2022, 2023, and 2024, and again in 2025. In 2025 the National Park Service suspended the requirement for roughly seven weeks in mid-summer (about July 7 through August 27). For 2026, Arches is not requiring timed entry; you can confirm current status on the official Arches National Park site (NPS).
Make your own charts. The full raw file below covers all 13 Utah NPS units that report visitation (the five national parks plus units like Glen Canyon, Cedar Breaks, Natural Bridges, and Dinosaur), every month back to 1979, with all 15 NPS statistics as columns: recreation and non-recreation visits, total visits, visitor hours, and the overnight-stay breakdowns. The data dictionary explains each column code, using the official NPS definitions. Values are copied straight from the NPS file; we only added unit names and the column key.
Important limitation. Recreation visits count visits, not unique people, and the counting method is set by the NPS and can differ by park. These numbers are reliable for tracking one park over time. They are not a clean head-to-head crowd ranking between parks.
What this finding does, and doesn’t, tell us
Arches: easing reservations has not brought a flood. The park drew 1.51 million recreation visits in 2025, up about 3% from 2024 but still below 2019's 1.66 million and well under the 1.81 million surge of 2021, the last full year with no reservation system. If you look only at the April-through-October core season, when timed entry applied, 2025 came in at about 1.14 million visits, almost identical to the timed-entry years of 2022 (1.10M), 2023 (1.14M), and 2024 (1.12M). The seven-week suspension in mid-summer 2025 did not produce a visible spike.
Zion: no park-wide reservation, and still climbing. Zion has never required a reservation to enter the park. It manages crowds with a seasonal canyon shuttle and, since 2022, an Angels Landing permit lottery (NPS) that is still in place for 2026. Zion drew 4.98 million recreation visits in 2025, its highest total since the 5.04 million of 2021 and about 11% above 2019.
Bryce Canyon is the outlier. Bryce fell to 1.97 million visits in 2025, down about 24% from 2019 and the only one of the five parks well below its own recent average. The NPS record does not, on its own, explain the drop, so we are not assigning a cause here.
The bigger shift: summer is losing its grip on the calendar. At all five parks, the share of the year that falls in the June-August peak has dropped since the mid-2010s, while winter and shoulder months pick up the slack. Comparing 2015-2017 with 2023-2025, peak-season share fell 4 to 8 points at every park (Bryce Canyon -8.2, Canyonlands -5.9, Capitol Reef -5.8, Arches -5.7, Zion -4.4). Winter (December-February) rose everywhere, most at Zion (+2.8 points) and Arches (+2.6); shoulder months (April, May, September, October) rose at four of the five, led by Bryce Canyon (+5.4). The pattern holds even at Zion, which has no reservation system, so this looks like a broad change in when people visit, not just a timed-entry effect. At Arches, where timed entry targeted the peak, the spillover went mostly into winter rather than shoulder.
What the data cannot say yet. 2026 is the first full year Arches will operate with no timed entry, but those monthly counts are not published yet. We will update this page when the 2026 numbers post. Until then, the strongest defensible statement is that through 2025, Utah's national parks show no surge tied to easing reservations.
Zion: annual recreation visits, 2015-2025
Quotable sentences
These sentences are pre-cleared to quote with attribution to Nicholas Major, National Sites Guide. The numbers come straight from official NPS data, so they hold up to fact-checks. A link back to nationalsitesguide.com is appreciated when you publish online.
“Through 2025, easing the Arches reservation has not produced a visitation surge. Arches drew 1.51 million recreation visits in 2025, still below its 2019 total of 1.66 million, even though timed entry was suspended for about seven weeks that summer.”Nicholas Major, National Sites Guide
“Zion never used a park-wide reservation to enter the park. It relies on a seasonal canyon shuttle and an Angels Landing permit lottery, and its visitation keeps climbing, reaching 4.98 million in 2025.”Nicholas Major, National Sites Guide
“The cleanest test, 2026, the first full year with no Arches timed entry, can't be measured yet because the NPS visitation record currently runs only through December 2025.”Nicholas Major, National Sites Guide
“Across all five Utah national parks, summer's share of the year is shrinking. The June-August peak lost 4 to 8 points of its share between the mid-2010s and the early 2020s, with winter and shoulder months absorbing the difference. It happens even at Zion, which has no reservation, so it reads as a broad shift in when people visit.”Nicholas Major, National Sites Guide
How to cite this analysis
If you reference these numbers in print, broadcast, or online, the following one-line citation is preferred:
Data and chart files
All assets on this page are released under CC BY 4.0. Please credit National Sites Guide when republishing.
Reach the analyst
Reach the analyst through the contact form. Include your outlet and deadline and we'll get back to you promptly.
Independent site. Not affiliated with or endorsed by the National Park Service. The underlying data comes from the official NPS Visitor Use Statistics Data Package, 2025 release; editorial analysis and methodology are ours. The NPS Arrowhead and other NPS marks are not used.