With National Parks Week beginning on April 20, online travel guide Travel Lemming ranked all 63 National Parks in the United States, placing some parks in fairly surprising positions.
The travel guide’s ranking was purely data driven, so while you may disagree with where your favorite or least favorite parks stand, know that this isn’t based on the editor’s or writer’s opinions. Data was collected and analyzed for seven separate categories; crowds, reviews, weather, affordability, jobs, accessibility, and biodiversity.
Crowds were based on, obviously, the number of people who visited each park in 2023 (per acre), while reviews were based on the average ratings left by visitors. Weather is based on how series of weather factors impact visitor comfort and affordability covers the total visitor spending. Jobs takes into account the total number of jobs associated with a park, biodiversity hits on the number of species, and accessibility focuses on the distance to the closest airport.
Without further rambling, here are the top 10 National Parks according to Travel Lemming:
- Shenandoah National Park, Virginia
- Joshua Tree National Park, California
- Olympic National Park, Washington
- Great Smoky Mountains National Park, Tennessee & North Carolina
- North Cascades National Park, Washington
- Grand Canyon National Park, Arizona
- Channel Islands National Park, California
- New River Gorge National Park, West Virginia
- Everglades National Park, Florida
- Redwood National & State Parks, California
For personal reasons, I’m a bit offended that Acadia National Park is ranked at 41, but I guess I understand. I think the biggest surprises throughout the full list, which you can view here, are probably Yellowstone being 16th and Yosemite being 22nd. But again, this is a data driven ranking, so I guess we’ll just have to accept it.
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Featured Image Credit: Olympic National Park via Facebook