The NPS announced last week it had 331.9 million recreational visits to its various sites across the country in 2024, surpassing the record of 330.97 million visits in 2016. DOGE cuts have been responsible for at least 755 firings at the NPS, according to a report from Axios citing a tally conducted by park rangers. The NPS said it has a workforce of roughly 20,000 people and had more than 138,000 volunteers in fiscal 2024.
The National Parks Conservation Association, an independent NPS advocacy group, said 1,000 probationary staff members have been fired as part of the cuts, along with pauses in hiring for some positions and some NPS buildings being under threat of having their leases canceled.
“The National Park Service just reported the highest visitation in its history, as the administration conducts massive firings and threatens to close visitor centers and public safety facilities. It’s a slap in the face to the hundreds of millions of people who explored our parks last year and want to keep going back. Americans love their national parks; these cuts do not have public support,” the group’s senior vice president of government affairs, Kristen Brengel, said in a statement last week.
The data released on visitation by the NPS for 2024 showed that 28 parks of the 404 NPS units that reported data set new records for visits in a year, while 38 parks showed visitation above the 10-year average for each month of 2024.
Historical trends show visitation progressively increases at the beginning of each year, peaking in July and decreasing through the end of the year. In the Washington, D.C., area, visitation to NPS sites will likely see an uptick due to the cherry blossoms blooming at the end of March and beginning of April.
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The most visited national park in 2024 was the Golden Gate National Recreation Area in the San Francisco Bay Area with 17.18 million visits, followed by the Blue Ridge Parkway in Virginia and North Carolina with 16.73 million visits, and the Great Smoky Mountains National Park in North Carolina and Tennessee with 12.19 million visits.
The most visited sites in the Washington area were the Lincoln Memorial with 8.47 million visits, the George Washington Memorial Parkway along the Potomac River in Virginia with 6.78 million visits, and the Vietnam Veterans Memorial with 5.29 million visits.
