All national parks will be offering free admission to anyone who wants to enter on Veterans Day Nov. 11.
While some of the more than 400 national parks that are open daily are free all the time, around 100 of them require an entrance fee.
The free day only covers the entrance fees to the parks and do not cover the costs of certain activities such as camping, boat launches, transportation or special tours.
The National Park Service recorded just over 325 million recreation visits in 2023 – a four percent increase over 2022.
The most visited parks were:
- Great Smoky Mountains in North Carolina and Tennessee – 13,297,647
- Grand Canyon in Arizona – 4,733,705
- Zion in Utah – 4,623,238
- Yellowstone in Idaho, Montana, Wyoming – 4,501,382
- Rocky Mountain in Colorado – 4,115,837
- Yosemite in California – 3,897,070
- Acadia in Maine – 3,879,890
- Grand Teton in Wyoming – 3,417,106
- Joshua Tree in California – 3,270,404
- Olympic National Park in Washington – 2,947,503
- Glacier National Park in Montana – 2,933,616
- Cuyahoga Valley in Ohio – 2,860,059
- Indiana Dunes in Indiana – 2,765,892
- Hot Springs in Arkansas – 2,502,967
- Bryce Canyon in Utah – 2,461,269
National Parks have undergone a multi-billion renovation begun by an act signed by then-President Trump in 2020 and continued under Joe Biden.
–Dwight Widaman | Metro Voice