COVID-19 closures caused National Park Service visitation to drop by 28% in 2020, making for the lowest number of visits\u00a0since 1980, the NPS revealed in its Annual Visitation Highlights report\u00a0Friday.<\/p>\n
All told, the parks service welcomed more than 237\u00a0million visitors last year, compared to 327.5 million in 2019.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Those lower numbers\u00a0were to be expected, given that more than 60 of the NPS’ 423\u00a0parks sites were closed for two months or more\u00a0during the the COVID-19 pandemic. The parks service noted that a nearly a year into the pandemic, a few historic and cultural parks remain closed. <\/p>\n
It also comes as no surprise that COVID closures played a role in reshuffling the makeup of 2020’s top 10 most-visited parks list.<\/p>\n
Great Smoky Mountains National Park, the perennial favorite located along the Tennessee-North Carolina border, held on to the top spot for the 77th consecutive year with 12.1 million visitors in 2020, down from\u00a012.5\u00a0million in 2019.<\/p>\n
Last year’s No. 2, Arizona’s Grand Canyon National Park slid to sixth place with 2.9 million\u00a02020 visitors, which was about half of the nearly 6 million who passed through in 2019.\u00a0In its place: Yellowstone National Park with 3.8 million visitors. The park, which straddles Wyoming, Montana and Idaho, was sixth last year with 4 million visitors.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The NPS reported that 15 parks actually set new visitation records in 2020.<\/p>\n
Ohio’s Cuyahoga\u00a0Valley National Park and Joshua Tree National Park, located in the California desert, were both new to the top 10 for 2020, pushing out\u00a0Yosemite, also located in California, and Montana’s Glacier National Park from the 2019 list.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Glacier’s eastern side is still closed in order to protect the health of the residents of the Blackfeet Nation.\u00a0<\/p>\n