The Full Dataset

ACAD 274 — Written/Encoded by: Jackson D. Kaul

2025 recreation visits and gross acreage for 25 national parks, plus a derived crowd-density figure (visitors per 1,000 acres). Rows are sorted by density, highest to lowest. Highlighted cells mark the most extreme values at either end of the scale. For the story behind specific rows, see the Analysis page.

Park	State(s)	Established	Acres	2025 Visitors	Entrance Fee	Visitors / 1,000 Acres
Gateway Arch	Missouri	2018	91	2,209,028	Free	24,275,033
Hot Springs	Arkansas	1921	5,554	2,494,611	Free	449,228
New River Gorge	West Virginia	2020	7,021	1,958,440	Free	278,905
Indiana Dunes	Indiana	2019	15,349	2,629,497	Free	171,313
Cuyahoga Valley	Ohio	2000	32,572	3,025,325	Free	92,905
Bryce Canyon	Utah	1928	35,835	1,967,367	$35	54,908
Haleakalā	Hawaii	1961	33,489	853,711	$30	25,492
Zion	Utah	1919	147,243	4,984,525	$35	33,850
Arches	Utah	1971	76,679	1,511,740	$30	19,713
Great Smoky Mountains	Tennessee / North Carolina	1934	522,427	11,527,939	Free	22,067
Congaree	South Carolina	2003	26,693	287,833	Free	10,784
Yosemite	California	1890	761,748	4,278,413	$35	5,616
Capitol Reef	Utah	1971	241,905	1,388,476	Free	5,740
Grand Canyon	Arizona	1919	1,201,647	4,430,653	$35	3,687
Joshua Tree	California	1994	795,156	2,932,644	$30	3,688
Olympic	Washington	1938	922,649	3,584,187	$30	3,885
Glacier	Montana	1910	1,013,126	3,136,557	$35	3,096
Canyonlands	Utah	1964	337,598	796,057	$30	2,358
Yellowstone	Wyoming / Montana / Idaho	1872	2,219,791	4,762,988	$35	2,146
Death Valley	California / Nevada	1994	3,408,396	1,320,134	$30	387
Big Bend	Texas	1944	801,163	568,104	$30	709
Denali	Alaska	1917	4,740,911	543,300	$15 / person	115
Isle Royale	Michigan	1940	571,790	29,091	$7 / person / day	51
Wrangell–St. Elias	Alaska	1980	8,323,146	108,840	Free	13
Gates of the Arctic	Alaska	1980	7,523,897	14,923	Free	2

Methodology & Caveats

"Visitors per 1,000 acres" is not an official NPS statistic — it's calculated for this site by dividing a park's annual recreation visits by its acreage (in thousands), using the NPS's own 2025 visitor-use figures and gross acreage totals. It's a useful stand-in for crowd pressure, but it has one real limitation worth flagging before you read too much into any single row:

• It breaks down for very small parks. A 91-acre downtown park like Gateway Arch can post a density figure in the tens of millions without actually feeling "crowded" the way a backcountry trail does — see Comparison 3 on the Analysis page for why. The density column is most meaningful once acreage climbs into the tens of thousands or higher.
• It's a park-wide average, not a trailhead-by-trailhead figure. A large park's visitors are rarely spread evenly — most traffic concentrates on a handful of scenic roads and short trails, so the true on-the-ground crowding at a park's most popular viewpoint is usually higher than the park-wide average suggests.