National Parks by Popularity 2023

Posted by:

Ken Crane

On:

February 14, 2024

Looking to escape the national park crowds this year? In 2023 alone, the National Park Service recorded 92,390,204 individual visits across the 63 national parks. As travel becomes more convenient and affordable the parks are increasingly becoming more accessible. And as parks grow in popularity, visitors are pressing into more remote parks such as Dry Tortugas National Park and Gates of the Arctic National park breaking visitation records.

Great Smoky Mountains National Park continues to easily hold the title as most-visited park with 13,297,647 visitations, nearly three times more than Grand Canyon National Park, the second most-popular park, and over 100 times more than Gates of the Arctic National Park, the least visited park. However despite their popularity, the parks still offer some of the best opportunities to get off the beaten path and escape the busyness of life. Below is the breakdown for each park and its rank by visitation.

2023 Annual Visitations per National Park

Rank	National Park	Annual Visitors
1	Great Smoky Mountains	13,297,647
2	Grand Canyon	4,733,705
3	Zion	4,623,238
4	Yellowstone	4,501,382
5	Rocky Mountain	4,115,837
6	Yosemite	3,897,070
7	Acadia	3,879,890
8	Grand Teton	3,417,106
9	Joshua Tree	3,270,404
10	Olympic	2,947,503
11	Glacier	2,933,616
12	Cuyahoga Valley	2,860,059
13	Indiana Dunes	2,765,892
14	Hot Springs	2,502,967
15	Bryce Canyon	2,461,269
16	Gateway Arch	2,422,836
17	New River Gorge	1,707,223
18	Mount Rainier	1,674,294
19	Hawai’i Volcanoes	1,620,294
20	Shenandoah	1,576,008
21	Arches	1,482,045
22	Capitol Reef	1,268,861
23	Death Valley	1,099,632
24	Badlands	1,046,400
25	Saguaro	1,010,906
26	Sequoia	980,567
27	Everglades	810,189
28	Canyonlands	800,322
29	Haleakala	791,292
30	Theodore Roosevelt	746,862
31	White Sands	729,096
32	Glacier Bay	703,659
33	Mammoth Cave	654,450
34	Kings Canyon	643,065
35	Wind Cave	592,459
36	Biscayne	571,242
37	Crater Lake	559,976
38	Petrified Forest	520,491
39	Great Sand Dunes	512,219
40	Big Bend	509,129
41	Mesa Verde	505,194
42	Denali	498,722
43	Lassen Volcanic	418,978
44	Redwood	409,105
45	Carlsbad Caverns	394,121
46	Kenai Fjords	387,525
47	Black Canyon of the Gunnison	357,069
48	Virgin Islands	343,685
49	Pinnacles	341,220
50	Channel Islands	328,746
51	Congaree	250,114
52	Guadalupe Mountains	227,340
53	Voyageurs	220,825
54	Great Basin	143,265
55	Dry Tortugas	84,285
56	Wrangell-St. Elias	78,305
57	North Cascades	40,351
58	Katmai	33,763
59	Isle Royale	28,965
60	Kobuk Valley	17,616
61	Lake Clark	16,728
62	National Park of American Samoa	12,135
63	Gates of the Arctic	11,045