A river of automobiles greeted Marti Pawlikowski, of Lancaster, Pennsylvania, when she arrived at Zion National Park on a Road Scholar tour this spring.
“It took us 45 minutes to get through,” she stated, including that the delays didn’t cease as soon as she entered the Utah park. “Waiting in line for the shuttle in Zion reminded me of long lines in Disney World.”
Last 12 months, 26 national park websites saw record-breaking visitation. Now, many are in the thick of what seems to be like one more blockbuster season.
Yellowstone National Park reported a new visitation record in May, a month that introduced jammed parking heaps and delays to the park that’s largely in Wyoming with elements in Montana and Idaho.
After scrapping its timed-reservation system early this 12 months, Yosemite National Park in California additionally noticed visitation attain new highs in May, with bumper-to-bumper automobiles clogging park roads.
“The traffic reminded me of L.A. at rush hour,” stated Walter Meyer of Sacramento, California, who visited Yosemite in late April solely to find that each trailhead car parking zone he tried was already full. At a present store, he met a frazzled worker overwhelmed by the surge.
“If it’s this bad now, I can’t imagine what July will be like,” he recalled her telling him.
As the summer goes on, 250th anniversary celebrations are more likely to amplify the crowds in some parks. This 12 months options occasions spanning historic reenactments, festivals and parades — and some reached capability months in the past.
Michele Treacy of Kinnelon, New Jersey, visited Mount Rushmore National Memorial for the Fourth of July weekend, when the National Park Service held an enormous Independence Day fireworks celebration.
Treacy had by no means been to a national park and commenced planning the journey in February. Only after her group booked a close-by campsite have been they knowledgeable of a lottery to see the fireworks at Mount Rushmore.
“We were kind of blindsided by that,” she stated. “All six of us put in for the lottery, and none of us got tickets.”
They wound up watching the fireworks celebration from their campsite about two miles away, together with 75 different folks crammed onto a tiny deck.
You may additionally use the phrase crammed to explain some elements of the park.
“The gift shop was wall to wall people,” she stated. “We asked, ‘Are they giving away the 250th anniversary t-shirts?’ But no, they weren’t. It was just extremely crowded.”
President Trump’s resolution to attend the fireworks celebration emerged solely after Treacy had booked the journey.
“The fact that the president was there added a whole other layer of excitement,” she stated.
It additionally added a complete different layer of safety and visitors, significantly since the sparsely populated space is house to many two-lane roads. Treacy, nevertheless, remained stunned by the “majesty” of Mount Rushmore and the different national parks she’d visited.
The park attendance surge has ripple results throughout the journey trade, and a few corporations are ramping up choices to satisfy the elevated demand. Tour operator Backroads has expanded capability on its US national park excursions by 12% to maintain up. The firm stated bookings in Death Valley and Great Smoky Mountains national parks rose as a lot as 60% from the earlier 12 months.
Here’s how record-breaking numbers are affecting some parks, what’s behind them — and the way vacationers can nonetheless make the most of summer journeys.
Booming visitation comes at a second of disaster for the National Park Service. In 2025, national parks misplaced almost 25% of their everlasting employees, according to an evaluation of Department of the Interior workforce knowledge by the National Parks Conservation Association (NPCA), a nonprofit advocacy group based in 1919.
Park Service amenities are strained following major Trump administration funding cuts that contributed to an estimated $24 billion in deferred maintenance. (While the House recently turned down the most excessive funding cuts proposed for the 2027 fiscal 12 months, the total NPS funds nonetheless sank 1.3%.) The Atlantic recently reported that funds have been additional diverted to the president’s renovation tasks, together with upgrades to the White House.
“It’s a really challenging time for people who work for the Park Service,” stated Cassidy Jones, a former park ranger and the NPCA’s senior visitation program supervisor.
While the National Park Service has described its elimination of timed-entry and reservation methods beforehand put in place as a method to extend entry, the NPCA — and many other experts — reject that framing.
“I do not think that’s what’s happening here,” Jones stated. “You’re returning to the chaos, unpredictability and lower-quality experiences that were happening before we were experimenting with managed access.”
A spokesperson from the NPS workplace of public affairs wrote, in an emailed assertion, that personnel modifications would assist accommodate guests this summer.
“The National Park Service continues to prioritize positions that directly support visitors and park operations, including visitor services, public safety, maintenance and resource stewardship,” the assertion stated.
In elements of the park guests don’t see, from IT to analysis and conservation applications, staffing has been hollowed out, Jones stated.
She added that in lots of locations, skilled everlasting staff have been changed with seasonal employees who may arrive weeks earlier than the summer journey season begins. The most critical impacts of funding cuts might solely be obvious over the long run, as sources and analysis decline, she stated.
“Visitors should really think about what kind of parks their children are going to get to visit,” she stated.
In a 12 months when many Americans are feeling financially strained and airfare prices remain high, it appears intuitive that national parks would rise in reputation. After all, a park trip that includes hikes and picnics is a comparatively inexpensive various to a global journey.
But the actuality is extra sophisticated.
Historically, visitation at national parks has actually fallen in powerful financial occasions. High fuel prices additionally are likely to preserve Americans away. A recent summer travel survey by Deloitte discovered that simply 45% of Americans are planning a summer trip with paid lodging at all, the lowest quantity in six years.
Those who’re touring, in the meantime, aren’t essentially selecting close-to-home holidays. While some initial surveys recommended Americans deliberate to prioritize home over worldwide journey this 12 months, the precise shift has to date been slight.
Flights by US residents to worldwide locations have been down simply 0.5% in May in comparison with the earlier 12 months, according to data from the National Travel and Tourism Office — nonetheless far greater than pre-pandemic ranges.
Yet national park visitation retains going up. “This is more of a sustained trend that we’ve been seeing for the last 10 or 12 years,” stated Casey Wichman, an affiliate professor in the college of economics at Georgia Tech, who has studied national park visitation. “Each year, aside from Covid, has brought an increase at some parks.”
Wichman’s own research has discovered that social media publicity helps drive visitation at widespread national parks. “Parks that are more photogenic, like Joshua Tree, saw the biggest increases when social media became more popular in the mid-2010s,” he stated.
When mixed with declining funding and staffing, that poses issues. But Wichman stated that whereas visitors jams, congestion and strained bodily infrastructure are necessary points, he sees parks’ rising reputation with Americans as a largely constructive factor — however annual headlines about overcrowding.
“What a lot of these stories miss are the benefits of having hundreds of millions of people go out and appreciate our national parks,” he stated. “Some of them leave with a greater appreciation for protecting the environment. Maybe they’ve learned about our environmental and cultural resources, and appreciate those public goods more.”
Funding shortfalls and layoffs impression the tons of of websites (433) overseen by the National Park Service, which embrace 63 National Parks in addition to National Monuments, National Battlefields, and National Historic Sites.
But the crowding is just not distributed equally — in 2025, the busiest 10 national parks fielded greater than half of all national park visits. Last 12 months, simply 7,786 folks made it to Alaska’s Kobuk Valley National Park, an enormous panorama of caribou-trodden dunes that’s the least-visited national park in the system.
For vacationers, these top-heavy numbers current a chance, stated Leigh Barnes, president of the Americas for tour firm Intrepid Travel.
“There are incredible parks and monuments across the country where visitors can still find that sense of discovery,” he stated. A current survey commissioned by the firm discovered that two-thirds of American vacationers suppose visiting a quieter park can be extra rewarding than touring a well-known one.
Now, the firm is encouraging vacationers to go to parks they may not already know — however ought to.
Instead of Washington state’s busy Olympic National Park, Intrepid is steering guests towards backpacking in North Cascades National Park. In place of overcrowded Bryce Canyon in Utah, they advocate hiking in Capitol Reef National Park, the place a panorama of pure bridges and arches sees far much less visitors.
“Some of the most rewarding experiences can be found in places that remain surprisingly overlooked,” Barnes stated.
Matt Nelson, a traveler from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, has found the similar factor.
Nelson visited his three hundredth NPS-run web site in June — California’s Lassen Volcanic National Park.
And whereas he nonetheless loves the iconic locations, like Yosemite and Yellowstone, he tends to go to these throughout the shoulder season. In the summer, he encourages Americans to department out past the most well-known names.
“I love the big Western national parks,” he stated. “But I’ve learned some really cool things at the smaller ones, too.”