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Visits to U.S. national parks and memorials are starting to return to pre-COVID-19 pandemic levels.

The National Park Service, which oversees federal parks, memorials and historic sites released 

, and there were about 312 million attendees in 2022, a 5 percent increase from the previous year and a 4.7 percent decrease from 2019 before the coronavirus swept the nation.

Here were the most visited sites across the country

Visitors to the top eight parks accounted for 26 percent of total visitation. Some of the least visited sites include the John F. Kennedy National Historic Site, the Frederick Douglass National Historic Site and the Clara Barton National Historic Site.

Other notable parks, such as the Grand Canyon, Yosemite and Yellowstone ranked at number 12, 20 and 25, respectively.

Thirty-eight percent of people went to recreation parks, 32 percent went to historical and cultural parks and 30 percent went to nature parks.

Since the agency began recording attendance in 1904, there have been 15.7 billion recreational visits to the National Park System. 

Lifestyle

Ayana Archie

Author

Notable sites such as the Smoky Mountains and the Lincoln Memorial rounded out the top 10 visited places in the National Park System as visits began rebounding from 2021.

These were the most visited national parks and memorials in 2022

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