These are the 10 most visited national parks in the U.S.

It’s a shame to rank the national parks and sites (memorials, seashores, historical places and others) since each is a precious, memorable example of preserving nature or culture, but it’s true that some get visited more than others. The National Park System just released their annual ranking of the parks by order of their visitors coming in for recreation—and the #1 choice isn’t one of the usual “big names” like Yellowstone or Yosemite.

Instead, it’s the Blue Ridge Parkway, a national park consisting of a roadway you can drive, stretching 469 miles along the crest of the Blue Ridge Mountains in North Carolina and Virginia.

In second place is the Golden Gate National Recreation Area in San Francisco, which includes the Golden Gate Bridge, the Presidio, Muir Woods and other popular destinations. It’s an urban park encompassing nearly 81,000 acres: the largest national park unit in an urban setting in the U.S.

Third is the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, which straddles North Carolina and Tennessee’s border (it appears at #17 on our list of best national parks in the U.S.). This park is known for hosting an incredible number of animal species (1,778 species including black bears and elk) and a variety of plant species as well. After the top three, the sites drop dramatically in visitorship—see below.

Here’s the top 10 list of the parks with their visitorship in 2022:

1. Blue Ridge Parkway: 15,711,004
2. Golden Gate National Recreation Area: 15,638,911
3. Great Smoky Mountains National Park: 12,937,633
4. Gateway National Recreation Area: 8,728,291
5. Lincoln Memorial: 7,825,397
6. George Washington Memorial Parkway: 7,397,120
7. Natchez Trace Parkway: 6,543,533
8. Gulf Islands National Seashore: 5,685,155
9. Lake Mead National Recreation Area: 5,578,226
10. Vietnam Veterans Memorial: 4,886,254 

So where are the big guns like the Grand Canyon, Yosemite and Yellowstone? They’re on the list at numbers 12, 20 and 25, respectively. Don’t forget you can visit any of these for free on the established free days—there’s one coming up next month!