National Park Visitation Dropped Nearly 28% In 2020

Above, Lassen Peak at Lassen Volcanic National Park. Photo by Armand Vaquer.

This should come at no surprise to anybody.

Thanks to the pandemic, visitation dropped at our national parks last year nearly 28%.

According to Backpacker:

National park visitation dropped precipitously in 2020, plunging almost 28% to its lowest level since 1980, the National Park Service said in a report on Friday.

According to the NPS’s Annual Visitation Highlights, national parks and other sites managed by the agency saw a total of 237 million visits, down 90 million, or 27.6%, from 2019. Seven parks reported more than 5 million visits, down from 11 in 2019.

In a press release, the NPS attributed the decline mostly to coronavirus-related closures. Parks across the country shuttered or modified their operations in response to the pandemic, beginning on March 20, 2020, when Rocky Mountain National Park and Yosemite both announced they would close in response to requests from local government officials. In all, 66 national parks closed for two months or more.

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