The 50 Most Popular National Parks in America
By Hannah Lang, Stacker News
On 5/15/21 at 8:00 AM EDT
Lucky-photographer / Shutterstock
Approximately 237 million people visited American national parks in 2020, representing a 28 percent year-over-year decrease attributed to the coronavirus pandemic. To determine the most popular national parks in the United States, Stacker compiled data from the National Park Service on the number of recreational visits each site had in 2020.
President Woodrow Wilson in 1916 signed the act creating the National Park Service to leave natural and historic phenomenons unimpaired for the enjoyment of future generations. Since then, our national parks have welcomed visitors from around the world to experience some of the best the country has to offer and showcase the country s natural beauty and cultural heritage.
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Originally established to conserve and preserve some of the most beautiful and unusual wilderness places in America, the National Park System soon grew to include archaeological and historic sites. The first park to preserve âthe works of men,â as President Theodore Roosevelt put it, was Mesa Verde, established in 1906. Others followed, preserving and showcasing ancient ruins and archaeological sites throughout the country. Most of them are in the Southwest. And for good reason.
People of the Southwest built their homes and cities in stone, carving them in soft sandstone crevices or building structures up to four stories high from clay and mud bricks. In the bone-dry environment of the desert, these ancient structures baked in the sun but stayed preserved. Visible for miles in the wide-open spaces, they were easy to find, and as settlers moved into the area, they started visiting them with no regard to their preservation. Vandalism threatened to destroy stru
The Four Corners
A thousand years ago, this region was the center of an incredibly complex and influential civilization that flourished over several centuries throughout the entire Southwest. The Ancestral Puebloans, along with other tribal groups, occupied this land and inhabited sites such as Mesa Verde, Chaco Canyon and Canyon de Chelly. Today, the region is home to the descendants of these tribes, many of whom have a strong connection to these important cultural sites.
From the dry desert ecosystem at Chaco Canyon to the pinyon-juniper woodlands at Mesa Verde, the geographic isolation of these parks offers visitors the ability to get off the beaten path to find solitude away from big crowds.