BECKLEY, W.Va. — West Virginia’s New River Gorge has joined some of the continent’s best-known landscapes among the 20 most-visited national parks in North America.
New River Gorge National Park and Preserve ranked No. 17 in a new Visual Capitalist comparison of U.S. and Canadian national parks, based on 2025 visitation. The West Virginia park recorded 1,958,440 recreation visits during the year, according to National Park Service statistics.
That number puts New River Gorge within about 9,000 visits of Bryce Canyon National Park in Utah and ahead of internationally recognized destinations such as Hawaiʻi Volcanoes, Shenandoah, Mount Rainier, and Arches National Park.
The comparison also shows how dramatically the New River Gorge’s national profile has changed since it was redesignated as a national park and preserve in late 2020.
New River Gorge approaches 2 million visits
National Park Service records show that New River Gorge received 1,195,721 recreation visits in 2019, the last full year before the COVID-19 pandemic and national-park redesignation.
By 2025, visitation had climbed to 1,958,440, up nearly 64% from 2019 and the highest annual total the park has recorded.
The increase has continued well beyond the initial attention surrounding the change in status. The park recorded about 1.59 million recreation visits in 2022, 1.71 million in 2023, and 1.81 million in 2024 before approaching 2 million in 2025.
The National Park Service reported an 8.09% increase from 2024 to 2025. New River Gorge was also among 26 National Park Service sites nationwide that established visitation records in 2025.
Acting Superintendent Eric LaPrice has previously said visitation has increased steadily since redesignation, while visitor spending has also grown in communities surrounding the park.
New River Gorge now rivals longtime national parks
The parks immediately surrounding New River Gorge in the visitation rankings illustrate how large its audience has become.
Bryce Canyon, established as a national park in 1928, recorded 1,967,367 recreation visits in 2025. New River Gorge recorded 1,958,440 — a difference of only 8,927 visits.
Hawaiʻi Volcanoes received 1,877,854 visits, while Shenandoah recorded 1,682,152, Mount Rainier 1,635,342, and Arches 1,511,740.
The comparison does not mean one park is more popular than another. National Park Service recreation-visit totals reflect differences in geography, roads, entrances, and how visitors are counted. But the numbers show the scale at which New River Gorge now operates as a national destination.
From the mid-1990s through the 2010s, annual visitation to the New River Gorge generally hovered around 1 million to 1.2 million recreation visits. It first surpassed 1.6 million in 2021 and has remained above that level since.
Growth reaches communities beyond the park
The increasing visitation also has consequences beyond the park boundary.
A National Park Service economic analysis found that visitors to New River Gorge National Park and Preserve, Gauley River National Recreation Area, and Bluestone National Scenic River spent $108.4 million in surrounding counties in 2024, an increase of almost 12% from the previous year.
Together, the three federally managed areas recorded more than 2 million visitors that year, funneling visitor spending into lodging, restaurants, recreation businesses, and other parts of the regional economy.
The New River Gorge extends through the Appalachian Mountains of southern West Virginia, where the New River has carved a deep canyon through the Allegheny Plateau. The park and preserve includes more than 70,000 acres along the river and destinations including the New River Gorge Bridge, Grandview, Sandstone Falls and the historic railroad town of Thurmond.
Five years after receiving national-park status, the New River Gorge is approaching another threshold: 2 million recreation visits a year. And in 2025, fewer than 9,000 visits separated it from Bryce Canyon.