NEWS BLIPS
Alaskan National Parks Set Record In 2018
Editor's Note: This news item was retrieved and first published through Anchorage Daily News's website.
The Anchorage Daily News reported that visits to national parks in the state of Alaska reached all-time highs in 2018 with 2.9 million visits. The Klondike Gold Rush National Historic Park in Skagway had the most visits and was the only national park in Alaska to top 1 million visitors, an increase of more than 100,000 over 2017, thanks to the record number of cruise ship passengers making day visits. Some of the most-visited parks in the system coincide with cruise destinations.
More than a dozen national parks are situated in Alaska, with eight seeing an increase in visitors last year. Glacier Bay and Denali, the next most visited parks after Skagway’s Klondike, both hosted nearly 600,000 visitors in 2018. Kenai Fjords was fourth with more than 300,000, and Sitka National Historical Park, with its collection of totem poles, came in fifth with nearly 200,000 visitors. Aniakchak National Monument and Preserve, a park located at a remote volcano crater on the Alaska Peninsula, had the fewest, with just 100 visits.
For details on national parks and preserves in Alaska, visit Travel Alaska.