National Park visitation by year.

Annual network totals.

This is the sum across every NPS unit that reports Recreation Visits, for each year 1979 through 2025. The full network includes National Parks, National Monuments, National Recreation Areas, National Seashores, National Historic Sites, and the other unit designations. The "parks-only" column restricts the sum to units with the official "National Park" designation.

By decade (annual average)

The network averaged roughly 270M annual visits across the 1980s, climbing to about 300M in the 2010s. The 2020s decade-average is still being shaped by the 2020 pandemic drop and the steady recovery since.

What's behind the swings

Three categories of disruption show up in the chart. Pandemic (2020): park closures from spring 2020 cut recorded visits by about 38% versus the prior year. Government shutdowns: the longest, in late 2018 and early 2019, didn't dent the annual total much because the system stayed open with reduced services. Wildfires and access loss: the 2023 Maui complex, the 2025 Dragon Bravo fire at Grand Canyon's North Rim, and the 2022 Yellowstone flood event reduced specific-park totals but moved the network number only modestly.

For the seasonal shape of those visits, when in the year the network is busiest, see visitation by month. For park-level breakdowns of the same data, see the most-visited and least-visited rankings.

Methodology

Visit counts are official "Recreation Visits" from the NPS Visitor Use Statistics Data Package, 2025. The five-year average column averages 2021-2025 to reduce single-year noise; the latest-year column shows the most recent complete calendar year. Some NPS units publish other statistic types (Tent Campers, Recreation Visit Hours) that are not used here. Independent site, not affiliated with the National Park Service. Network total includes every NPS unit that reports Recreation Visits in the Visitor Use Statistics data package. Parks-only restricts the sum to units with the 'National Park' designation as recorded in the NPS Data API.

Common questions.

How many people visit national parks each year?

The National Park Service network recorded about 323.01M recreation visits in 2025, the most recent complete year. The official "National Park" units alone accounted for roughly 88.79M of that.

What year had the most national park visits?

The busiest year in the 1979-2025 record is 2024, at about 331.86M recreation visits. The network has hovered near that level since recovering from the 2020 pandemic drop.

What was the lowest national park visitation year?

The lowest reading is 1979, the first year of the dataset, at about 205.37M visits. The sharpest modern drop was 2020, down about 28% from 2019 during pandemic closures.

Are national park visits increasing?

Over the long run, yes. The 2025 total is up from about 307.25M in 2015, though from one year to the next the network usually moves only a few percent.