Which are America’s most crowded national parks? Less crowded nationalparks? Can widely-publicized lists be trusted?Based on my visits, I have a good idea, but you don’t have totake my word for it. In my former career, I dealt with numbers quite abit, and here I pull out precise answers by careful use of the NPS data.
Counting Visits
The National Park Service makes available a lot of visitor usestatistics. Of all of them, the list of national parks ranked bythe annual number of recreation visits is the one that has capturedthe attention of media and bloggers. While it is only a measure ofpopularity, it has been used to determine the“top” (best) national parks, and more relevant to this article, themore and less crowded national parks.
The numbers for the top and bottom 15 aretabulated below (full data) with the twist that instead of using only last year’sfigures like everybody else, I have instead used the average over the last ten years (likeI did in Treasured Lands). I am more interested in statistics of lasting value as opposed to snapshots in time, and the average is more immune to variations causedby exceptional events such as the summer of 2017 wildfires in YosemiteNational Park that caused visitation to drop from a 5,028,868 high in2016 to 4,336,890 in 2017, while most other parks saw their visitationcontinue to increase.
Visits Rank Great Smoky Mountains 9,951,197 1 Grand Canyon 4,894,769 2 Yosemite 3,996,500 3 Yellowstone 3,601,693 4 Rocky Mountain 3,447,870 5 Zion 3,233,651 6 Olympic 3,137,907 7 Grand Teton 2,824,532 8 Acadia 2,605,536 9 Cuyahoga Valley 2,359,884 10 Glacier 2,320,217 11 Gateway Arch 2,006,982 12 Joshua Tree 1,728,215 13 Hawaii Volcanoes 1,565,752 14 Bryce Canyon 1,565,676 15 … Kenai Fjords 291,727 45 Pinnacles 229,210 46 Voyageurs 227,996 47 Black Canyon of the Gunnison 198,211 48 Guadalupe Mountains 175,588 49 Congaree 121,036 50 Great Basin 105,880 51 Wrangell St Elias 72,362 52 Dry Tortugas 62,764 53 Katmai 36,825 54 North Cascades 24,164 55 Isle Royale 17,972 56 American Samoa 17,321 57 Lake Clark 13,402 58 Kobuk Valley 11,939 59 Gates of the Arctic 11,038 60
Great Smoky Mountains National Parks consistently ranks number one invisitation by a large margin, but is it really the most crowded park?No matter which numbers you use, amongst the less crowded, you shouldexpect to find the Alaskan parks, which are remote, vast, and notdevelopped. In thecontinental U.S., you should find the backcountry parks Isle Royale National Park, which has no road access and no roads, and North Cascades National Park, which except for a short unpaved road is explored by steep trails. Channel Islands National Park shares Isle Royale National Park’s characteristics, but the visitation numbers are very skewed by their inclusion of the visitor center, which is located mainland, whereas only one in ten of visitors make it to the islands themselves.
For some of the other national parks, the number of visits doesn’talways correlate with my memories of how crowded the park was. To takethe example of two parks very similar in terrain and access – pavedroads only cover a small portion of each, Canyonlands National Parkreceives 579,000 visits and Capitol Reef National Park receives783,000 visits. Yet Capitol Reef National Park always felt lesscrowded than Canyonlands National Park. Note also how parks such asDry Tortugas, and Great Basin are in the bottom ten, below someAlaskan parks.
Counting Hours
The National Park Service offers other statistics than the number ofrecreation visits, which is the default option. They are seldom mentioned, but for our purpose one of them is more useful:the number of recreation hours. If two visitors spend respectively 1hour and 10 hours in a park, you are 10 times more likely to run intothe second one. Visits for both are 1, but recreation hours countsdifferentiate them. To continue with the previous example, CanyonlandsNational Park receives 4.3 million recreation hours (average 0.83 dayper visit) while Capitol Reef National Park receives 1.3 millionrecreation hours (average 0.18 day per visit), because theconfiguration of the park is conductive of a quick drive to the end ofthe short scenic road and back.
The average recreation hours of the last ten years for the top andbottom 15 are tabulated in the two last columns, with the numbers forvisits in the first two columns for comparison in the table below.
visits visits
rankhours hours
rank Grand Canyon 4,894,769 2 77,132,187 1 Yellowstone 3,601,693 4 75,042,496 2 Great Smoky Mountains 9,951,197 1 73,751,865 3 Yosemite 3,996,500 3 69,060,263 4 Sequoia 1,060,315 21 34,300,080 5 Glacier 2,320,217 11 27,089,324 6 Rocky Mountain 3,447,870 5 23,853,991 7 Zion 3,233,651 6 22,409,146 8 Grand Teton 2,824,532 8 19,163,408 9 Kings Canyon 577,854 29 18,852,981 10 Olympic 3,137,907 7 15,067,414 11 Acadia 2,605,536 9 14,506,845 12 Mount Rainier 1,201,686 18 14,397,328 13 Joshua Tree 1,728,215 13 12,475,720 14 Bryce Canyon 1,565,676 15 10,266,170 15 … Capitol Reef 783,314 25 1,275,862 45 Black Canyon of the Gunnison 198,211 48 1,168,051 46 Great Basin 105,880 51 1,161,639 47 Isle Royale 17,972 56 1,151,455 48 Saguaro 721,678 26 1,034,186 49 Pinnacles 229,210 46 912,448 50 Kenai Fjords 291,727 45 903,085 51 Dry Tortugas 62,764 53 733,466 52 Congaree 121,036 50 469,065 53 North Cascades 24,164 55 468,323 54 Guadalupe Mountains 175,588 49 454,766 55 Katmai 36,825 54 284,277 56 Gates of the Arctic 11,038 60 168,313 57 Lake Clark 13,402 58 106,848 58 American Samoa 17,321 57 34,642 59 Kobuk Valley 11,939 59 34,472 60
This is a move in the right direction, but note that Gateway Arch,which feels crowded like a city park, because it is one, is not evenin the top 15, whereas the Alaskan and backcountry parks are still notconsistently at the bottom. Wondering why despitecomparable number of visits, people spend so much more time in Gatesof the Arctic National Park than in Kobuk Valley National Park? Quite a few treat the former as the ultimate backpackingdestination it is, while most visitors to thelatter just fly to the dunes for a quick stroll.
The Crowd Factor: Hours per square mile
While recreation hours are a better indicator of crowds thanrecreation visits, they don’t take into account the size of the park,which is crucial because everything else being equal, if people arespread into a larger area, the place is less crowded. To continue inthe Moab area, Arches National Park receives 4.6 million recreationhours, about the same as the 4.3 million of Canyonlands, yet everybodywho has been to both will agree that Arches is more crowded. This issimply because Arches National Park streches 120 square miles, whereasCanyonlands National Park stretches 527 square miles, a surface areamore than 4 times larger that dilutes the crowds.
As a “crowd factor”, I propose to use the ratio of the number ofrecreation hours divided by the park’s surface area. In addition, ifwe normalize that number by dividing it by 365 (number of days of theyear) and by 12 (number of hours in a day as accounted by the NPS), weget a number that roughly indicates how many people one is going tofind on a square mile of park at any hour. The resulting data isbelow, with the crowd factor in the last two columns:
Area Visits Hours Hours
RankCrowd
FactorCrowd
RankGateway Arch 0.14 2,006,982 8,027,927 19 13100 1 Hot Springs 9 1,380,780 2,921,406 33 74 2 Acadia 74 2,605,536 14,506,845 12 45 3 Bryce Canyon 56 1,565,676 10,266,170 15 42 4 Cuyahoga Valley 51 2,359,884 6,879,998 22 31 5 Virgin Islands 23 432,377 2,659,118 36 26 6 Zion 229 3,233,651 22,409,146 8 22 7 Great Smoky Mountains 815 9,951,197 73,751,865 3 21 8 Haleakala 45 1,097,150 2,767,447 35 14 9 Yosemite 1,189 3,996,500 69,060,263 4 13 10 Rocky Mountain 415 3,447,870 23,853,991 7 13 11 Sequoia 631 1,060,315 34,300,080 5 12 12 Mesa Verde 81 542,916 3,838,543 28 11 13 Grand Canyon 1,902 4,894,769 77,132,187 1 9.3 14 Grand Teton 484 2,824,532 19,163,408 9 9 15 … Voyageurs 341 227,996 1,897,482 38 1.3 45 Capitol Reef 284 783,314 1,275,862 45 1 46 Guadalupe Mountains 135 175,588 454,766 55 0.77 47 American Samoa 14 17,321 34,642 59 0.56 48 Everglades 2,357 989,970 3,642,777 29 0.35 49 Death Valley 5,269 1,041,596 7,861,951 20 0.34 50 Isle Royale 893 17,972 1,151,455 48 0.29 51 Glacier Bay 5,039 480,802 6,175,456 23 0.28 52 Denali 7,408 481,744 6,977,855 21 0.22 53 Kenai Fjords 1,047 291,727 903,085 51 0.2 54 North Cascades 789 24,164 468,323 54 0.14 55 Wrangell St Elias 13,005 72,362 3,328,672 31 0.06 56 Katmai 5,741 36,825 284,277 56 0.01 57 Lake Clark 4,093 13,402 106,848 58 0.006 58 Gates of the Arctic 11,756 11,038 168,313 57 0.003 59 Kobuk Valley 2,735 11,939 34472 60 0.003 60
Using the crowd factor defined above produces drastic changes inrank. It is now clear that GatewayArch and Hot Springs, by virtue of their tiny size and sizeablevisitation are the most crowded parks, the former one by a whoppingmargin. The small Acadia, Bryce Canyon, Cuyahoga Valley, and VirginIslands come next, and this is consistent with my experience. Amongstthe sizeable parks (more than 100 square miles), Zion is the mostcrowded, while Yosemite is the most crowded of the large parks (morethan 1,000 square miles). The Alaskan and backcountry parks are nowall at the bottom, and the list confirms the opportunities forsolitude at Death Valley. There is quite a bit to be learned from theNPS statistics, and this post has given you an idea of what can be donewith their considered use. It has focused on the top and bottom 15, butthe full data can be found on myparks data resource. Do you have any suggestions to improve this methodology?
