The Terra Galleria Blog – QT Luong

Which are America’s most crowded national parks? Less crowded national parks? Can widely-publicized lists be trusted? Based on my visits, I have a good idea, but you don’t have to take my word for it. In my former career, I dealt with numbers quite a bit, 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 use statistics. Of all of them, the list of national parks ranked by the annual number of recreation visits is the one that has captured the attention of media and bloggers. While it is only a measure of popularity, it has been used to determine the “top” (best) national parks, and more relevant to this article, the more and less crowded national parks.

The numbers for the top and bottom 15 are tabulated below (full data) with the twist that instead of using only last year’s figures like everybody else, I have instead used the average over the last ten years (like I 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 caused by exceptional events such as the summer of 2017 wildfires in Yosemite National Park that caused visitation to drop from a 5,028,868 high in 2016 to 4,336,890 in 2017, while most other parks saw their visitation continue 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 in visitation by a large margin, but is it really the most crowded park? No matter which numbers you use, amongst the less crowded, you should expect to find the Alaskan parks, which are remote, vast, and not developped. In the continental 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’t always correlate with my memories of how crowded the park was. To take the example of two parks very similar in terrain and access – paved roads only cover a small portion of each, Canyonlands National Park receives 579,000 visits and Capitol Reef National Park receives 783,000 visits. Yet Capitol Reef National Park always felt less crowded than Canyonlands National Park. Note also how parks such as Dry Tortugas, and Great Basin are in the bottom ten, below some Alaskan parks.

Counting Hours

The National Park Service offers other statistics than the number of recreation 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 1 hour and 10 hours in a park, you are 10 times more likely to run into the second one. Visits for both are 1, but recreation hours counts differentiate them. To continue with the previous example, Canyonlands National Park receives 4.3 million recreation hours (average 0.83 day per visit) while Capitol Reef National Park receives 1.3 million recreation hours (average 0.18 day per visit), because the configuration of the park is conductive of a quick drive to the end of the short scenic road and back.

The average recreation hours of the last ten years for the top and bottom 15 are tabulated in the two last columns, with the numbers for visits in the first two columns for comparison in the table below.

	visits	visits rank	hours	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 even in the top 15, whereas the Alaskan and backcountry parks are still not consistently at the bottom. Wondering why despite comparable number of visits, people spend so much more time in Gates of the Arctic National Park than in Kobuk Valley National Park? Quite a few treat the former as the ultimate backpacking destination it is, while most visitors to the latter 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 than recreation visits, they don’t take into account the size of the park, which is crucial because everything else being equal, if people are spread into a larger area, the place is less crowded. To continue in the Moab area, Arches National Park receives 4.6 million recreation hours, about the same as the 4.3 million of Canyonlands, yet everybody who has been to both will agree that Arches is more crowded. This is simply because Arches National Park streches 120 square miles, whereas Canyonlands National Park stretches 527 square miles, a surface area more than 4 times larger that dilutes the crowds.

As a “crowd factor”, I propose to use the ratio of the number of recreation hours divided by the park’s surface area. In addition, if we normalize that number by dividing it by 365 (number of days of the year) and by 12 (number of hours in a day as accounted by the NPS), we get a number that roughly indicates how many people one is going to find on a square mile of park at any hour. The resulting data is below, with the crowd factor in the last two columns:

	Area	Visits	Hours	Hours Rank	Crowd Factor	Crowd Rank
Gateway 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 in rank. It is now clear that Gateway Arch and Hot Springs, by virtue of their tiny size and sizeable visitation are the most crowded parks, the former one by a whopping margin. The small Acadia, Bryce Canyon, Cuyahoga Valley, and Virgin Islands come next, and this is consistent with my experience. Amongst the sizeable parks (more than 100 square miles), Zion is the most crowded, while Yosemite is the most crowded of the large parks (more than 1,000 square miles). The Alaskan and backcountry parks are now all at the bottom, and the list confirms the opportunities for solitude at Death Valley. There is quite a bit to be learned from the NPS statistics, and this post has given you an idea of what can be done with their considered use. It has focused on the top and bottom 15, but the full data can be found on my parks data resource. Do you have any suggestions to improve this methodology?