Large wild animals found at the park include bison<\/a>, elk, wolves, cougars<\/a>,\u00a0grizzly bears<\/a>\u00a0and black\u00a0bears<\/a>.\u00a0Then there are the smaller creatures, such as bats, chipmunks, bald eagles<\/a>, ospreys, rattlesnakes and trout.<\/p>\n Lower Falls on the Yellowstone River, which flows through the middle of the national park. Hal Bergman\/Getty Images<\/p>\n Yellowstone is not the only popular national park in the US, with the NPS reporting a total of 323,014,305 recreation visits to the protected areas in 2025, a figure slightly down on 2024 (331,863,358 visits).<\/p>\n In fact, you may be surprised to learn that Yellowstone is third on the list of most-visited national parks. So, how do others compare?<\/p>\n US national park recreation visits 2025<\/p>\n The most-visited national park in the US in 2025 was the Great Smoky Mountains National Park in Tennessee and North Carolina, with an enormous 11,527,939 visits. Second spot went to Zion National Park in Utah, with less than half that number (4,984,525), closely followed by Yellowstone (4,762,988).<\/p>\n Here are the top 10 most-visited US national parks in 2025:<\/p>\n Great Smoky Mountains National Park, Tennessee and North Carolina: 11,527,939 visits Recording just 7,786 recreation visits, Kobuk Valley National Park in Alaska was the least-visited national park in the US in 2025.<\/p>\n More stories from around the world<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Spanning 2.2 million acres of Wyoming, Montana and Idaho, Yellowstone National Park is absolutely huge. But size isn’t…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":546450,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[49,48,66,323],"class_list":["post-546449","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-wildlife","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-science","tag-wildlife"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/546449","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=546449"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/546449\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/546450"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=546449"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=546449"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=546449"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Great](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/Great-Smoky-Mountains-National-Park.jpeg\")
Autumn grips the forests and peaks of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. Credit: Beata Whitehead\/Getty Images<\/p>\n
\nZion National Park, Utah: 4,984,525 visits
\nYellowstone National Park, Wyoming, Montana and Idaho: 4,762,988 visits
\nGrand Canyon National Park, Arizona: 4,430,653 visits
\nYosemite National Park, California: 4,278,413 visits
\nRocky Mountain National Park, Colorado: 4,171,413 visits
\nAcadia National Park, Maine: 4,079,318 visits
\nGrand Teton National Park, Wyoming: 3,800,648 visits
\nOlympic National Park, Washington: 3,584,187 visits
\nGlacier National Park, Montana: 3,136,557 visits<\/p>\n