What were most popular national parks in Washington state in 2025? See the list
The National Park Service manages more than 85 million acres of land across the country, from national parks to historic sites.
Parks staff keeps track of how many visitors stop by each attraction every month, making end-of-year tallies available after the first quarter of the following year.
In Washington state, the Park Service monitors visitation rates at 10 locations.
Of those locations, five had more than a million visitors each in 2025, according to data from the National Park Service.
These were the most popular sites in 2026:
Which lands does National Park Service manage in Washington?
The National Park Service monitors visitation rates at national recreation areas and parks, as well as historic parks and sites.
The federal agency manages these historic sites and parks in Washington state:
- Fort Vancouver National Historic Site
- Klondike Gold Rush National Historical Park Seattle
- San Juan National Historical Park
- Whitman Mission National Historic Site
The Park Service also manages these recreation areas:
- Lake Chelan National Recreation Area
- Lake Roosevelt National Recreation Area
- Ross Lake National Recreation Area
In Washington state, the national parks are:
- Mount Rainier National Park
- North Cascades National Park
- Olympic National Park
What was the most popular national park in 2025?
According to the National Park Service, Washington state’s most popular national land in 2025, by far, was Olympic National Park.
More than 3.58 million visitors visited the Olympic Peninsula park in 2025, the Park Service data said.
The park saw more visitors in 2024, when it recorded over 3.7 million visits.
However, 2025 was the second-best year for visitation that Olympic National Park has seen in the past two decades.
The park recorded the most visitors in 1997, when more than 3.8 million people passing through entrance points.
How many visitors did Mount Rainier get in 2025?
The second-most popular attraction was Mount Rainier National Park, according to data from the Park Service.
The national park recorded more than 1.63 million visitors in 2025, though staff noted exact visitation numbers for some months were uncertain due to the government shutdown near the end of the year.
Mount Rainier National Park’s best year for visitors was 1970, when 1.9 million-plus people visited.
What are popular recreation areas in Washington state?
According to the National Park Service, Lake Roosevelt National Recreation Area was the third most popular national land in Washington state in 2025.
It saw more than 1.18 million visitors, marking the park’s best year since 2021.
The recreation area, which spans Franklin D. Roosevelt Lake between Grand Coulee Dam and Northport, consistently sees more than a million visitors each year.
Its best year for visitation was 2012, when the park attracted more than 1.78 million visitors, according to Park Service data.
Ross Lake National Recreation Area saw more than 1.17 million visitors in 2025, making it Washington state’s fourth most popular national land that year.
It’s part of the North Cascades National Park Service Complex.
Despite historic flooding and landslides that left much of the recreation area inaccessible toward the end of 2025, Ross Lake recorded its highest visitation number since records began in 1990.
The previous record for Ross Lake was set in 2019, when it attracted 1.08 million visitors, according to federal parks data.
Fort Vancouver National Historic Site was the fifth national land to bring in more than a million visitors in 2025.
With more than 1.07 million visitors, the site on the north bank of the Columbia River had its best year since before the COVID-19 pandemic, and its fourth-best year in its recorded history.
While the government shutdown temporarily impacted visitation, according to parks staff, visitors playing Pokémon Go brought in significant numbers.
This story was originally published April 6, 2026 at 1:58 PM with the headline "What were most popular national parks in Washington state in 2025? See the list."