Public use of the national parks; a statistical report, 1960-1970

Division of Statistical Analysis, National Park Service

The data tabulated here exhibit the annual volumes of public use of the Service-administered areas as reported for the years 1960 through 1970. A few parks, besides the non-Federally operated ones mentioned above, are excluded from the reporting system for reasons of impracticality in producing consistent or meaningful data. This issue continues the series of such multi-year summaries, the first of which covered the period 1904-1940, the second 1941-1953, and the third 1954-1964. Although the years covered here overlap those of the last summary, they constitute a convenient whole, dating from 1960 when a park visit was redefined as: The entry of any person into an area administered by the National Park Service such that he makes some use of the services or facilities provided therein by the Service. Within the 1960-70 period, series of data for some parks may exhibit an occasional apparent discontinuity. This arises from an ongoing process of park-by-park revisions in public use estimating procedures which grow out of changes in access or internal circulation roads, development of new facilities, or management review of existing procedures. Care should therefore be exercised in drawing conclusions about trends at individual areas. Statistics on the public use of the national parks, specifically series on both visits and overnight stays, are published monthly. Other items are compiled annually. For those wishing to studyrecreation and park use in detail, back numbers of the monthly publications are available on request until the stock is exhausted. While printed in limited numbers, complete annual sets of these are usually available for the current year and the immediately preceding biennium. The figures in Table 2 are shown in thousands of visits.

Public use of the national parks; a statistical report, 1960-1970

Series