How many people visit America's national parks each year?

Today's 63 national parks had 93.9 million recreation visits in 2025, just below the record 94.3 million of 2024 and up from 52.6 million in 1979, when monthly counts begin. Visits fell to 67.9 million in 2020, when many parks closed for part of the pandemic. Every year counts the same 63 parks, including a few made national parks only recently, such as Indiana Dunes and New River Gorge.

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Key facts

Measure: Recreation visits to the 63 national parks. Written from the data below.

  • The latest figure, for 2025, is 93.9M.
  • That is up 78% from 52.6M in 1979.
  • The highest was 94.3M in 2024.
  • The lowest was 52.6M in 1979.

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 people visit America's national parks 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-visits-per-year (accessed October 15, 2026).

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The data

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The file has the numbers in this table, with the source, license and date. Please credit the source and Chartly.

Year Recreation visits to the 63 national parks
1979 52,605,100
1980 53,921,174
1981 57,163,980
1982 57,406,687
1983 58,491,521
1984 57,335,469
1985 58,287,491
1986 62,375,241
1987 65,638,052
1988 66,093,316
1989 66,898,798
1990 64,192,615
1991 68,282,857
1992 69,859,794
1993 71,913,677
1994 72,933,979
1995 75,453,461
1996 74,284,003
1997 76,310,729
1998 75,910,411
1999 75,332,239
2000 73,520,383
2001 71,399,633
2002 72,046,762
2003 70,217,433
2004 70,113,274
2005 70,285,864
2006 66,601,047
2007 68,407,842
2008 66,766,473
2009 69,042,242
2010 71,079,019
2011 68,607,024
2012 71,065,451
2013 69,136,047
2014 73,927,020
2015 80,305,331
2016 87,619,211
2017 89,391,395
2018 87,714,135
2019 91,010,784
2020 67,931,703
2021 92,251,857
2022 88,662,181
2023 92,390,204
2024 94,287,567
2025 93,892,121

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