Visits Up at Some Parks, Down Overall
Visitation within the park system is expected to drop 8 percent.
WASHINGTON, D.C.—While more Americans than ever have flocked to some of the more patriotic park sites as well as those close to home this year, overall visitation within the National Park System is expected to drop by 20 million people compared with last year.
Several reasons account for the expected drop-off, officials say, one being that international travel is down 10 percent. This has meant substantially fewer visitors to western icon parks such as Grand Canyon National Park, where the normally booked park lodges had vacancies this summer.
Of the 280 million visitors to the park system in 2001, 40 percent were foreigners, said David Barna, chief of communications for the National Park Service.
"That's where we've taken the biggest hit this year," he said.
The reasons for the decline in international travel are complicated but probably include the following: skittishness over traveling to America after the attacks of last September 11, struggling economies in countries such as Japan, rampant wildfires in the West, and a general sense that the parks are too crowded in the summer.
As a result, visits to icon parks are down about 15 percent so far this year. They are down 14 percent at Bryce Canyon National Park, 15 percent at Everglades National Park, 6 percent at Grand Canyon, and 5 percent at Yosemite National Park.
However, other sites in the park system reported record numbers this past summer, fueled in part by a surge of patriotism and an increase in families taking vacations by car.
"It looks to us like Americans are staying close to home, but they are visiting the parks," said Barna.
"At many of the cultural sites in the system, and at parks near large urban centers, visitation is up. People are revisiting our nation's history."
Visitation is up 5 percent at Shenandoah National Park, 4 percent at Fort McHenry National Monument and Historic Shrine, and at nearly all battlefields within the park system.
"There has been a renewed sense of patriotism since [last] September 11," said Barna. "People are coming to park sites such as Mount Rushmore and Independence National Historical Park in record numbers."
Another plus is that many park visitors this year have been first-timers.
"A lot of people who have not visited Yosemite [National Park] before are saying 'Let's go,'" said park spokesman Scott Gediman. "They're coming with families, either discovering or re-discovering the park."
Still, Gediman said it is hard not to notice the decline in foreign visitors this year, resulting in the drop in visitation at Yosemite. "What's different is driving around and seeing practically no tour buses."
Officials are hoping that the new visitors to parks this year will, in the long run, more than offset the recent drop in visitation.
"Once more visitors start flying again, along with a new crowd of people that have discovered the parks, we could actually see overall visitation going up again sometime soon," said Barna.
Preliminary data suggest the park system will have 260 million visitors in 2002, down from 280 million visitors in 2001 and 286 million in 2000.
