Blue Ridge Parkway visits in 2022 dropped. Is it still most popular national park?

ASHEVILLE - About 200,000 fewer people visited the Blue Ridge Parkway in 2022 as did the previous year, according to the National Park Service.

But that amounts to just a tiny blip – just over a 1% dip – in the grand scheme and did nothing to topple the parkway’s perch as the most visited unit of the 424-national park system.

An estimated 15.7 million recreation visitors came to enjoy the parkway last year, down from 15.9 million in 2021. The long, skinny park stretches 469 curvy miles from Shenandoah National Park in Virginia and crests the scenic Blue Ridge Mountains, passing directly through Asheville to its end at the entrance to Great Smoky Mountains National Park in Cherokee.

The parkway is one of only three parks that had more than 10 million recreation visits in 2022.

“We recognize the parkway’s popularity is due in large part to the variety of opportunities and experiences it was designed to provide for the visitor – both on and off the Parkway,” parkway superintendent Tracy Swartout said in a news release.

“Passing through 29 counties across two states, through some of this nation’s most beautiful scenery, the Parkway’s design lends itself to the interests and abilities of many people.”

The parkway – and many national parks – saw a boom in visitation in 2021 after many had been closed to visitors for much of 2020, the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic. Numbers seem to have dropped off a little across the county.

“Visitation number on the Blue Ridge Parkway always has so much to do with road project closures or weather-related closures,” said Leesa Brandon, parkway spokesperson.

“What's happening in a given area especially like on a given weekend, and really across a given year across all 469 miles can easily account for some of those numbers going a little bit up and a little bit down. It's really hard to pinpoint a precise reason or time or place that accounted for those changes.”

The parkway lies about half in Virginia and half in North Carolina, the more rugged, high-elevation mountainous side that contains some of the busiest parts of the parkway with features including Mount Mitchell – the highest peak east of the Mississippi – Craggy Gardens, Mount Pisgah hiking area and campground and Graveyard Fields. It also hugs the Mountains-to-Sea Trail.

“The parkway was built around this idea of bringing some economic opportunity to the communities along southern Appalachian Blue Ridge Mountain region and I'm grateful that we have a fairly consistent kind of visitation pattern and so that it supports that those opportunities certainly off the parkway in the communities as well,” Brandon said.

She reminded visitors to always check the weather and the parkway's road-closure web page at nps.gov/blri before heading out.

Visiting Blue Ridge Parkway by the numbers

Total parkway visitors in 2022: 15,711,004. Though it dipped slightly from 2021, last year was still one of the most popular years on the parkway in the past 10 years.

Most popular place on the Blue Ridge Parkway?

That’s hard to gauge, Brandon said, since not every overlook, hiking area or picnic spot has a counter. But she said it's safe to say that North Carolina historically has more visitors than Virginia. In 2022, there were some 3.9 million visitors to the Virginia side, while 11.8 million people visited the parkway in North Carolina.

Asheville is a popular jumping-off point for countless outdoor activities.

The most popular month on the parkway last year was October, with 2.2 million visitors, many coming to gape at the fall foliage. July and August tied for second-most popular time to visit, each with 1.8 million visitors.

Parkway bridge:Blue Ridge Parkway bridge over I-26: 1st pier complete, 1st half by mid 2023

What is the most popular unit with the National Park Service?

That prize still goes to the Blue Ridge Parkway, which has traded the No. 1 spot over the years with Golden Gate National Recreation Area in San Francisco. In 2022, the parkway had just 72,000 more visitors than Golden Gate.

The third most popular national park unit also lies partially in North Carolina – Great Smoky Mountains National Park – with 12,937,633 visitors. This was the second-busiest year on record for the Smokies, which covers a half-million acres of rugged, mountainous terrain on the Western North Carolina-eastern Tennessee border.

The parkway, Golden Gate and the Smokies were the only national park sites that drew more than 10 million visitors last year, according to National Park Service reports.

Great Smoky Mountains parking tags: Can visitors use other passes to park for free?

Tour management plan:National Park Service finalizes air tour management plan for Smokies; group has concerns

Which was the most popular national park?

Even though it came in third overall, the Smokies was the most-visited national park in 2022. The distinction among the 424 NPS sites is that parks are those with “park” in the name, such as Yellowstone, Yosemite and the Grand Canyon. The Smokies has more than 800 miles of hiking trails and is riddled with rivers, streams, waterfalls, picnic areas, campgrounds and lots of wildlife, including elk and black bears.

Other NPS sites vary widely, including the Carl Sandburg Home National Historic Site in Flat Rock, the Statue of Liberty, and seashores, monuments and historic battlefields.

Karen Chávez is Interim Executive Editor for the Asheville Citizen Times, part of the USA TODAY Network. Tips, comments, questions? Call 828-236-8980, email, KChavez@CitizenTimes.com or follow on Twitter @KarenChavezACT.

This article originally appeared on Asheville Citizen Times: Blue Ridge Parkway visitors down in 2022. Is it still most popular?