Utah’s state park system logged more than 12 million visits over the past year, the third year running it has cleared that mark, according to Utah State Parks’ own visitation data. That single-year total is larger than the annual visitor count for dozens of individual national parks combined.
The 43-park system pulled in roughly 12.1 million visits for the fiscal year that ended in June, and 12.2 million across the 2025 calendar year, figures first reported by the Deseret News and confirmed in a breakdown from the Utah News Dispatch. That’s more than double the roughly 5 million visits the parks drew back in 2016.
Key Points
- Utah’s state parks topped 12 million visits for the third straight year, up from under 8 million in 2019 and 10.6 million at the 2020 pandemic peak
- Sand Hollow State Park led the system with 1,408,754 visits, followed by Dead Horse Point at 1,130,864 and Snow Canyon at 919,545
- The newest addition, Utahraptor State Park, saw visits jump 390% in its first full fiscal year, to more than 143,000
- That single-park total already exceeds what several full national parks draw in a year — Voyageurs (about 206,000 visits) and Congaree (about 288,000) among them, based on National Park Service-derived data
- Willard Bay saw the steepest decline, down more than 260,000 visits, after its reservoir was drained for repairs
The comparison to national parks isn’t just a rhetorical flourish. Individually, Dead Horse Point State Park’s 1.13 million visits alone rival what some full national parks see in a year, and the state system’s 12 million-plus total dwarfs the visitor counts at smaller units like Great Basin National Park (roughly 161,000 visits) or Capitol Reef National Park (about 1.39 million), based on recent National Park Service visitation figures.
Scott Strong, director of Utah State Parks, credited growing outdoor interest and continued investment in facilities. “As interest in the outdoors continues to increase, we will continue to provide parks full of great recreation opportunities, well-maintained facilities and park rangers ready to help you make lifelong memories,” Strong said in comments carried by the Utah News Dispatch.
Not every park is trending the same direction. Along with Willard Bay’s decline, Jordanelle, Antelope Island, Rockport, Great Salt Lake Marina and Bear Lake state parks each saw visitation drop by more than 30,000, according to the same data. But the newer and lesser-known parks — Utahraptor, Goblin Valley and Wasatch Mountain among them — are picking up the slack.
