California
California’s most-visited national park may surprise you
Yosemite, its well-known granite partitions strewn with waterfalls, has lengthy been the poster little one for the U.S. nationwide park system in California.
However one other park within the Golden State sees a ton extra guests — and it is really proper right here within the San Francisco Bay Space.
The Golden Gate Nationwide Recreation Space spans greater than 60 miles of the coast, north and south of San Francisco. Final 12 months, it was the third-most visited nationwide park within the nation with 13.7 million visits, the Nationwide Park Service’s 2021 visitation numbers report stated.
The GGNRA had extra guests than a few of the nation’s most well-known journey points of interest, together with the Grand Canyon Nationwide Park (4.5 million visits) and Yellowstone Nationwide Park (4.9 million). Yosemite, 160 miles east of San Francisco within the Sierra Nevada, ranked twenty first within the checklist of most-visited parks with 3.3 million.
A household walks close to Crissy Subject, within the Presidio, San Francisco, California with the Golden Gate Bridge within the background, June 28, 2020.
Some won’t notice GGNRA is a part of the nationwide parks system, comprised of 27 distinct park websites. Most of the Bay Space’s most well-known locations — together with the Presidio of San Francisco, Ocean Seaside, Fort Funston, Alcatraz Island, Fort Level Nationwide Historic Web site, Crissy Subject, the Marin Headlands, Muir Woods Nationwide Monument and Sweeney Ridge — are a part of the GGNRA.
When you think about all that the GGNRA encompasses — greater than 130 miles of trails and 1,200 historic constructions spanning a number of counties — you start to grasp why it sees so many guests. It is also positioned inside a serious metropolitan space that is dwelling to greater than 7 million folks.
The Nationwide Park Service administers 423 websites throughout the nation. Blue Ridge Parkway, the nation’s most linear park with 469 miles working via Virginia and North Carolina, was the most well-liked park within the nation, with 15.9 million visits in 2021. Nice Smoky Mountains in North Carolina and Tennessee was second, with 14.1 million visits.