Death Valley sizzles with record number of visitors in 2018

There was nothing dead about Death Valley last year.

The national park 100 miles west of Las Vegas set an attendance record in 2018 with 1,678,660 visitors, according to newly released National Park Service statistics.

That smashed the old mark, set in 2016, by more than 380,000 and continued a trend that has seen traffic at the 3.4 million-acre national park more than double since 2009.

“It’s really exciting to see so many people from around the world experiencing and appreciating the beauty of Death Valley National Park,” Superintendent Mike Reynolds said in a statement.

Mojave National Preserve also saw record attendance last year, with over 787,000 visitors to the 1.6 million-acre desert park in California, about 60 miles southwest of Las Vegas.

Closer to home, Lake Mead saw its visitation dip by more than 303,000 in 2018, but it still ranked as the park service’s sixth-busiest site, with almost 7.58 million visitors.

“Lake Mead National Recreation Area continues to be a popular destination because of the diverse activities that you can do in the park year-round and because it’s only minutes from Las Vegas,” Todd Suess, its acting superintendent, said in a statement.

Since 1937, nearly 440 million people have stopped at the recreation area, which has consistently ranked among the 10 most-visited park service sites for the past 80 years.

Two very different parks, Great Basin in Nevada and Zion in Utah, also saw slight declines in attendance in 2018 after several dizzying years of record-setting growth.

Just over 153,000 people visited Great Basin last year, down about 15,000 from the park’s high of 168,028 in 2017. Zion drew 4.32 million people in 2018, down roughly 185,000 from the previous year but above 4 million for the third straight year and just the third time ever.

Zion ranked as the nation’s seventh-busiest park in 2018.

Golden Gate National Recreation Area in San Francisco topped the list for the fourth time in six years with more than 15.2 million visitors. Falling to second with just under 14.7 million was Blue Ridge Parkway, a 470-mile scenic road that meanders from Shenandoah National Park in Virginia to the park service’s third-busiest site, Great Smoky Mountains National Park on the Tennessee-North Carolina border.

Gateway National Recreation Area in New York City and New Jersey came in fourth, followed by the Lincoln Memorial in fifth.

Death Valley rose to No. 50 on the list of the nation’s busiest parks as a result of its visitation surge. It ranked 66th in 2017 and 78th in 2008.

Surprisingly, perhaps, August was Death Valley’s busiest month of 2018, with 182,929 visitors.

“Some people visit in the summer in spite of the heat because that is the only time they can travel,” Reynolds said. “Others come to Death Valley in the summer precisely because it is the hottest place on Earth.”

Though the park’s visitation has been on the rise for more than a decade, at least some of last year’s increase is being attributed to more accurate counting methods, including data from a traffic counter on Daylight Pass Road, which enters Death Valley from the Nye County town of Beatty.

Park visitation nationwide topped 300 million in 2018 for the fourth consecutive year. The 318.2 million visits to America’s parks last year was the third-highest total since record keeping began in 1904.

Contact Henry Brean at hbrean@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0350. Follow @RefriedBrean on Twitter.