The National Parks Service recently released updated attendance data for parks and recreation areas across the country. For 2025, there was good news and bad news: overall, these areas were visited 323 million times over the course of the year. That’s the good news; the bad news is that this figure was down ever so slightly — specifically, 2.7% — from a record-setting 2024. Also down by a small amount were overnight stays and the overall number of hours visitors spent at the parks.
There was a significant exception to this trend, however: the state of California. As Jack Dolan reports at the Los Angeles Times, the nine national parks located in the state collectively experienced an increase in visitors from 2024 to 2025. Overall, Dolan writes, these nine parks attracted “nearly 12 million recreational visits” last year.
While last year’s national park attendance set a national record, California’s own attendance record was previously set in 2019, according to the Times. Last year’s number of visits exceeded that year’s total by approximately 300,000. It isn’t difficult to see why California’s parks would attract so many people; the state’s climate, along with other attractions like its cities and amusement parks, make it a popular overall destination.
United Airlines Is Boosting Service Near Several National Parks
Some new seasonal routes are coming soonEven Kings Canyon National Park, which experienced a prescribed burn for part of last year, saw an increase in recreation visits from 2024 to 2025. We’ll see if this trend continues in 2026, though with the cost for visitors from overseas to visit national parks increasing dramatically this year, that factor could play a role in upending visitor statistics in California’s national parks — and the rest of the country’s as well.
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