North Carolina Is Home To America’s Most Visited National Parks
National Parks are hot right now. It makes sense. We’ve been enduring a pandemic that has made indoor activities less than ideal, so people started looking for things to do outside. Social distancing is a lot easier in the wide-open spaces of National Parks.
According to the National Park Service, more than 297 million people visited a National Park in 2021, up 60 million from 2020. Six parks broke visitation records they set in 2020. Two parks in North Carolina have been especially popular.
Topping the list for 2021 is the Blue Ridge Parkway in Virginia and North Carolina, which saw 15.9 million visitors. Coming in second is Great Smoky Mountains National Park in North Carolina and Tennessee, which had 14.1 million visitors, an increase of about two million from the year before, and a record for that park. You can see the rest of the top ten below.
Top Ten Most Visited National Parks in 2021
