How many visits does the whole National Park System get each year?

All the sites the National Park Service runs, from national parks to monuments, parkways, seashores and memorials, had 323 million recreation visits in 2025, against the record 332 million of 2024 and 205 million in 1979. Part of the rise comes from new sites: about 270 reported visits in 1979 and 400 in 2025. The 2020 dip to 237 million came from pandemic closures.

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Key facts

Measure: Recreation visits to all National Park Service sites. Written from the data below.

  • The latest figure, for 2025, is 323M.
  • That is up 57% from 205M in 1979.
  • The highest was 332M in 2024.
  • The lowest was 205M in 1979.

This chart is one of the 50 in The U.S. in 50 charts, 2026, a yearly report of the key numbers on how the country is doing.

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Source and date

Source
National Park Service, Visitor Use Statistics
License
Public domain (U.S. government work); source National Park Service
Data as of
Published

Citation

Chartly. “How many visits does the whole National Park System get each year?” Chart. Data: National Park Service, Visitor Use Statistics, https://irma.nps.gov/Stats/ (data as of December 31, 2025). https://chart.ly/charts/national-park-system-visits-per-year (accessed November 5, 2026).

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The data

Download data (CSV)

The file has the numbers in this table, with the source, license and date. Please credit the source and Chartly. Developers can also get them as JSON (how).

Year Recreation visits to all National Park Service sites
1979 205,369,795
1980 220,463,211
1981 238,592,669
1982 244,924,579
1983 243,619,396
1984 248,785,509
1985 263,441,808
1986 281,094,850
1987 287,244,998
1988 282,451,441
1989 269,399,837
1990 255,581,467
1991 267,840,999
1992 274,694,549
1993 273,120,925
1994 268,636,169
1995 269,564,307
1996 265,796,163
1997 275,236,335
1998 286,762,265
1999 287,130,879
2000 285,891,275
2001 279,873,926
2002 277,299,880
2003 266,230,290
2004 276,908,337
2005 273,488,751
2006 272,623,980
2007 275,581,547
2008 274,852,949
2009 285,579,941
2010 281,303,769
2011 278,939,216
2012 282,765,682
2013 273,630,895
2014 292,800,082
2015 307,247,252
2016 330,971,689
2017 330,882,751
2018 318,211,833
2019 327,516,619
2020 237,064,332
2021 297,115,406
2022 311,985,998
2023 325,498,646
2024 331,863,358
2025 323,014,305

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