Blue Ridge Parkway most visited park in the US in 2020
The Blue Ridge Parkway was the most popular park in 2020, with more than 14 million visitors throughout the year, according to the National Park Service.
The closest competitors were the Golden Gate National Recreation Area with 12.4 million visitors and the Great Smoky Mountains National Park with 12.1 million visitors, NPS reported.
Popular stops on the Blue Ridge Parkway, which spans 469 miles through parts of Virginia and North Carolina, include Grandfather Mountain, Linville Falls, Chimney Rock State Park and the Biltmore Estate in Asheville.
Late in 2019, after his retirement, longtime WRAL anchor Bill Leslie traveled the length of the Blue Ridge Parkway, starting near Cherokee, N.C., and finishing in Rockfish Gap, Va., chronicling his stops with blogposts.
More than 90 million fewer visitors visited the country's parks in 2020 than in 2019, the study found, largely due to the coronavirus pandemic.
NPS has been tracking visitors since 1904.
