It's always been about national park visitor stats (2026 ed.)
From the start, NPS founders knew it was their biggest bargaining chip.
In 2025, the National Park System saw almost 9 million fewer visits than in 2024. While this might seem like disheartening news at first, it’s important to remember a few things. First, 2024 was a record-breaking year with almost 332 million visits across the National Park System. Second, a series of events—both policy-based and natural—shook both the entire system and individual parks. Intense wildfires raged in Grand Canyon and Black Canyon of the Gunnison. Entry fees for foreign visitors skyrocketed, and Canadians have been boycotting U.S. vacations. Though the national parks were kept open during the longest government shutdown in history, park staff and advocates encouraged people to stay away.
When you take all that together, an approximate 3% decrease in visitation isn’t all that surprising—but it could have implications for the future of the national park system nonetheless.
While the majority of Americans want to see the national parks protected, there are those in power who have signaled their desire to defund and privatize parts of the park system. It’s worth remembering that the Trump administration’s proposed FY2026 budget for the NPS included a $1 billion cut with $900 million slashed from park operations. The National Parks Conservation Association estimated that a cut of this size would result in the closure of 350 national park units.
And this is where yearly visitor statistics become important. Since the very origin of the National Park Service, visitation data has been a powerful tool that agency leaders have used to bargain for money and resources from Congress. In order to prove the value of protecting landscapes (as opposed to exploiting them), the NPS has always had to prove itself as a strong “return on investment.”
NPS founder Stephen Mather knew this well—and he took big, personal steps to make the case for national parks through visitation.
Publicizing the Parks
Early in 1915, Stephen T. Mather and his assistant Horace Albright happily participated in dedicating Rocky Mountain National Park as the newest unit in the burgeoning national park system. While the creation of this new park was momentous, Mather quickly moved on to bigger business. He had been brought on as an employee of the Department of the Interior to campaign for the creation of a centralized office to run the national parks. This was a huge task, and it required a daring strategy.
Luckily, Stephen Mather was a bold, eccentric man. After making his fortune as the owner of the Thorkildsen-Mather Borax Company, Mather discovered a passion for conservation that would define the latter part of his life. Shortly after being brought to Interior, he was assigned a young California lawyer as his assistant: Horace Albright. The two men quickly bonded. Together, they are most deserving of being called the “founders” of the National Park Service, forming the nucleus around which dozens of other influential conservation leaders would rotate.
“As soon as Mr. Mather was back in Washington, he directed all his attention to ways and means of getting national parks more widely known,” wrote Albright in his autobiography, Creating the National Park Service: The Missing Years.
In his account, Albright writes that Mather had a clear strategy for how to campaign for the creation of the National Park Service—and that he was willing to pay for it personally. “He felt that he had to get people to use the parks before he could get legislation and appropriations. Too few people knew about them. He believed that Congress had the cart before the horse, that it wouldn’t appropriate money until proof was furnished that the parks were being used.”
To meet this end, Mather stitched together a Frankenstein publicity office within the Department of the Interior. There was no central bureau for managing national parks at the time (in fact, the jurisdiction of the parks was spread across the departments of Interior, Agriculture, and War), so Mather had to “borrow” staff and space from other agencies. He hired an influential newspaperman and friend, Robert Sterling Yard, to run the office. Mather personally paid Yard’s $5000 salary but had him placed on the payroll of the U.S. Geological Survey for $1 so that Yard could receive certain privileges as a federal employee. He managed to secure an office space in the Bureau of Mines and a starting secretary from the Biological Survey (now the US Fish and Wildlife Service).
Using their connections, Mather and Yard were able to have a number of editorials supportive of the parks published in popular newspapers by influential writers—but their greatest accomplishment was the National Parks Portfolio. It came in two forms: a collection of pamphlets and a green, hardbound edition. Inside were descriptions of the national parks and monuments, written by Yard and accompanied by impressive photographs. Once again, Mather circumvented his lack of government resources by coercing others in the Interior Department to aid his efforts. A photographer from the Bureau of Reclamation was convinced to tour the parks and send back photos.
Mather himself donated $5000 to pay for the photographs and plates. He persuaded twenty-one western railroads—who would also benefit from increased visitation to national parks and monuments—to pay $40,000 for the printing of the National Parks Portfolio. Mather and Yard mailed the publication to a list of libraries, travel agencies, editors, and politicians compiled by volunteers from the General Federation of Women’s Clubs.
As Albright puts it, "The publicity radiated by Yard almost immediately produced results. Along with the public’s heightened awareness of their “pleasuring grounds” came real progress for the parks in a general sense.”
One such point of “real progress” was a provision in a Civil Sundry Bill that allowed the Secretary of the Interior to accept land donated on behalf of the parks. This was a significant victory for Stephen Mather. He had raised funds through his business connections to purchase the Tioga Road, which he donated to the federal government. This opened up a free new portal to Yosemite National Park for the American people.
Through all this, Mather’s strategy was simple: If you promote the parks, visitors will come. If visitors come, then appropriations will follow. Mather put his personal fortune behind this, paying salaries and purchasing land to make the parks more accessible. History has proven it a winning strategy.
Turning this information into action
Last year, in an op-ed for the National Parks Traveler, former NPS director Jonathan Jarvis said that “the NPS is the perfect example of an agency providing direct services to the public through its operation of 433 park units, its conservation of natural and cultural resources, its programs, and the delivery of high-quality visitor experiences.”
In a sense, he is reaching back to the same logic as Stephen Mather. Money spent on the National Park Service is money well spent for the American people, and the visitation numbers—even if they decreased slightly from last year—are evidence for that reality.
Like Stephen Mather, we can use the visitation statistics to make the case with our representatives to continue funding our national park system. If you visited a national park this year, write to your representatives about it. Start it with a sentence like "X number of people visited Y national park unit in 2025. I was one of them.” Share your genuine experience, and then advocate for increased funding for our national parks.
Here’s the note I’ll be sending off to lawmakers in the House and the Senate today:
In 2025, my family and I were among the 77,000 people who visited Fort Stanwix National Monument in upstate New York. While we were there, we had a meaningful experience exploring the fort and learning about the Indigenous and colonial history of our nation. The park staff was friendly and helpful and provided me with excellent information about the North Country National Scenic Trail, which passes through the monument.
As decisions are made in the coming year about future funding for the National Park System, consider all the benefits that this relatively small national park unit offered my family, which included a two-year-old and a newborn. It provided us with an educational experience, a safe place to stretch out legs on a longer trip, and a greater understanding of the history of our country. These benefits, though they may seem small, shouldn’t be overlooked—especially as funding cuts to the NPS could threaten this exact type of place.
As your constituent, I urge you to represent my interests and the broad interests of the American people in keeping places like Fort Stanwix National Monument well funded and well protected.
I encourage you to do the same—and to believe that it could make a difference.
Will