Peninsula Daily News and The Associated Press
OLYMPIC NATIONAL PARK — There might have been an economic downturn, but Americans boosted visits to their national parks — including Olympic National Park.
Olympic has 1,677,193 recreation visits this year through July — an increase of 4.7 percent over the same period last year, said park spokeswoman Barb Maynes.
Last month alone, recreation visits to Olympic rose 8.93 percent over those of July 2008, Maynes said.
“June is the only month this year when the monthly visitation total was less than the same month last year,” Maynes said in an e-mail, “but we had quite a bit of rain and chilly temperatures that month.”
The rising numbers at Olympic National Park reflects an upturn throughout the nation this year.
The National Park Service said that 127.7 million visits were made to national parks in the first six months of 2009, an increase of about 4.5 million over the same period in 2008.
“America’s national parks and public lands provide affordable and accessible recreational opportunities from coast to coast,” said Interior Secretary Ken Salazar.
“It is great to see so many Americans, including the first family, take advantage of the incredible natural, cultural and historic resources that we have here at home. Especially when times are tough, our parks and public lands refuel the spirit and help energize local economies.”
President Barack Obama and his family visited Yellowstone National Park on Saturday and Grand Canyon National Park on Sunday.
‘Free weekends’
The visits came during the last of three summer weekends when the administration waived entrance fees at 147 national parks — including Olympic — and monuments to spur tourism and boost local economies.
Officials credit the “free weekends” for part of the spike in park visits, but say visits were up even before the fee waivers began in June.
The economic slowdown may have forced people to stay close to home for their vacations, officials said, noting that visits to parks near urban areas including Virginia’s Shenandoah National Park, Acadia National Park in Maine and Gettysburg National Military Park in Pennsylvania were all up this year compared with 2008.
Visits also were up at Yellowstone, which is among the top five most-visited national parks. The park is known for Old Faithful and other geysers as well as hot springs and spectacular scenery.
More than 900,000 people visited Yellowstone in July, an all-time record for monthly visits and a jump of 94,000 visits over 2008.
Lower gas prices
Al Nash, a spokesman for Yellowstone, said the free weekends promotion likely played a role in the increase, but said a bigger factor was a dramatic drop in gas prices from a year ago.
“Frankly you’re not likely to plan a trip halfway across the country or halfway across the world to save $25,” Nash said, referring to the park’s entrance fee.
But visitors were enticed by gas prices that dropped from about $4 a gallon last year to around $2.80 a gallon this year.
“If you compare the cost of visiting a national park to any other type of tourism or entertainment it just reflects what a great value we are,” Nash said.
