LIFESTYLE

WA’s Olympic National Park among nation’s busiest for summer RV visits

Jun 7, 2026, 6:45 AM

WA olympic national park rv visit...

A photo of Olympic National Park. (Photo courtesy of the National Park Service)

(Photo courtesy of the National Park Service)

While the summer is one of the busiest times of the year for RV travel, one Washington national park was listed as one of the busiest parks in the nation.

Research from Blue Capital Holdings was based on National Park Service Data, which compared 30 parks across the U.S. by their total RV visits between June and August from 2021 to 2025.

“Summer shows just how concentrated RV travel has become around a small number of national parks. Glacier and Yosemite are in a league of their own, and together they logged more than 850,000 summer RV visits over the past five years,” Rich Turasky, CEO at Blue Capital Holdings, said.

Olympic National Park’s 5-year totals push it into the top 5

Washington’s Olympic National Park was ranked No. 4 on the list with a whopping 280,272 total visits in the summer between 2021 and 2025.

In 2024 alone, 53,813 people visited the park over the summer, 7% higher than last year’s turnout.

“Some of the biggest names lost ground,” Turasky stated. “Great Smoky Mountains fell 19%, Grand Canyon was down 20%, and Yellowstone dropped 31% year on year. That suggests RV travelers are not just following the most famous names blindly, but are being influenced by heat, crowding, access, costs, and the overall experience once they arrive.”

The top spot on the list for a summer national park visit was Glacier National Park in Montana, which tallied a whopping 429,693 visitors between 2021 and 2025 summers.

Yosemite National Park in California, ranked No. 2, saw a massive increase in visitors last year compared to 2024. In 2025, 116,096 people traveled to the park, an increase of 43% compared to the year prior.

Washington was a shoo-in for its No. 4 ranking, as the next most-visited national park was Acadia National Park in Maine, which drew nearly 110,000 fewer visitors than Washington’s across the four years of data collected.

A full list of the busiest national parks and their visitor totals between 2021 and 2025 includes:

  1. Glacier National Park, Montana: 429,693
  2. Yosemite National Park, California: 423,672
  3. Great Smoky Mountains National Park, Tennessee: 333,739
  4. Olympic National Park, Washington: 280,272
  5. Acadia National Park, Maine: 158,105
  6. Zion National Park, Utah: 136,418
  7. Rocky Mountain National Park, Colorado: 136,247
  8. Shenandoah National Park, Virginia: 130,245
  9. Grand Canyon National Park, Arizona: 124,968
  10. Sequoia National Park, California: 120,587

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