US National Parks are amazing places to visit. What makes the parks so great are the amount of diversity in terms of what you might see.
To date, I haven’t seen enough of the US National Parks, having only visited four- American Samoa, Badlands, Everglades and Mammoth Cave. During these visits, I’ve seen a lot of variety and I’d definitely like to see more in the future.
T+L recently had an article saying that, “The Most Popular National Park in the US Is A Spectacular Road Trip Destination.”
I was definitely curious to find out about the most popular US National Park…
The top US National Park had over 16 million visitors in 2017. The Blue Ridge Parkway “takes visitors on a scenic drive along some 469 miles of the Appalachian Highlands“, according to T+L.
Overall, the NPS had around 331 million visits last year. From those numbers, the top three most visited parks had over 42 million visits!
Here are the Top 3 Visited US National Parks:
- Blue Ridge Parkway- 16,093,765
- Golden Gate National Recreation Area — 14,981,897
- Great Smoky Mountains National Park — 11,388,893
From the parks that I’ve visited, I’d probably choose the Badlands in South Dakota as my favorite. I loved the interesting rock formations as well as abundant wildlife that we got to see. The animals which I remember most are the herds bison and colonies of prairie dogs!
What would your favorite US National Park be?
Find out more about the most visited National Park here.
My favorite National Park is Zion. I’ve been there three times and would gladly go again. It has my favorite hike in the world, Angels Landing. The most recent NP I’ve visited is Big Bend in Texas and it exceeded my expectations greatly. I’d highly recommend spending some time there. It’s not too far from Guadalupe Mountains NP, Carlsbad Caverns NP and White Sands NM, so you can experience a lot in one trip to the area (West Texas, Southern New Mexico).
Jay- To be more specific, yes you are definitely correct. Blue Ridge and Golden Gate are both part of the NPS.
The only National Park on your list of 3 is Great Smoky Mountains NP. The other two are part of the National Parks Service, but are not National Parks. There are only 59 National Parks, with GSM NP above being the most visited. This article needs to be rewritten.