Statistical abstract: 2021
Authors: Ziesler Pamela , Spalding Claire 
Published: May 2022

In 2021, recreation visits to National Park Service (NPS) sites rebounded from the COVID-19 pandemic-driven low visitation of 2020 and climbed to 297,115,406 recreation visits. This is an increase of 60 million recreation visits (+25.3%) from 2020 and a decrease of 30 million recreation visits (-9.3%) from 2019. Recreation visitor hours were 1,356,657,749 – a 28.6% increase from 2020 and a 5.1% decrease from 2019. Total overnight stays followed a similar pattern with 12,745,455 overnight stays – up 4.7 million (+58.5%) from 2020 and down 1.1 million (-8%) from 2019. Five parks were added to the reporting system in 2021: Alagnak Wild River in Alaska, Camp Nelson National Monument in Kentucky, Medgar and Myrlie Evers Home National Monument in Mississippi, Tule Springs Fossil Beds National Monument in Nevada, and World War I Memorial in Washington, D.C. These parks were responsible for over 629,000 recreation visits in 2021. Factors influencing visits to National Park System units in 2021 include: continuing closures and limited capacities due to COVID-19 mitigation at some parks, temporary closures for wildland fires in 2021 (eleven parks), severe regional smoke/haze from ongoing wildland fires throughout the summer and early autumn affecting parks in the western half and northern tier of states in the continental U.S., two hurricanes in 2021 – both in August – impacted visitation: Hurricane Henri caused temporary closures of some parks in the northeast and Hurricane Ida caused temporary closures of parks along the Gulf Coast and generated some heavy flooding in the northeast, hurricanes and wildland fires in previous years resulting in lingering closures, most notably Hurricanes Irma and Maria in 2017, the Carr and Woolsey Fires in 2018, Hurricane Dorian in 2019, the Caldwell, Cameron Peak, East Troublesome, and Woodward Fires in 2020, and Hurricane Sally in 2020. Forty-four parks set a record for recreation visits in 2021 and 6 parks broke a record they set in 2020. See Appendix A for a list of record parks. The number of reporting units with over 10 million recreation visits was the same as in recent years (3 parks) and 73 parks had over 1 million recreation visits. Twenty-five percent of total recreation visits occurred in the top 8 parks and fifty percent of total visitation occurred in the top 25 parks. Several parks passed annual visitation milestones including Capulin Volcano NM which passed 100,000 annual recreation visits for the first time, Big Bend NP and Devils Tower NM which each passed 500,000 annual recreation visits for the first time, and Zion NP which passed 5 million visits for the first time. Other parks passed milestones for accumulated recreation visits including Hamilton Grange NMEM (1968-2021) and Palo Alto Battlefield NHP (2003-2021) each passing 1 million total recreation visits, Voyageurs NP (1976-2021) passing 10 million total recreation visits, and Hot Springs NP (1904-2021) passing 100 million total recreation visits. Population center designations were updated in 2021 to reflect overlap of park boundaries with statistical areas from the 2020 U.S. Census. Many population center changes reflect increases in local population as indicated by parks changing from rural to outlying or from outlying to suburban. Other changes reflect increasing complexity in population density as parks changed from a single designation, such as rural or suburban, to a mixed designation. See the Definitions section for population center definitions and Table B.1 for previous and updated population center designations by park. In the pages that follow, a series of tables and figures display visitor use data for calendar year 2021. By documenting these visits across the National Park System, the NPS Statistical Abstract offers a historical record of visitor use in parks and provides NPS staff and partners with a useful tool for effective management and planning. In 2021, 394 of 423 NPS units...