Overnight Stay: One night within a park by a visitor. A party of 2 visitors staying over for 3 nights yields 6 overnight stays.
Very cool map but I’m pretty sure petrified forest NP has 0 spots as it’s closed at night.
There’s a lot of good camping spots in grand canyon park but I assume most of those numbers are the river
You should go do it. Put your name in the drawing its a once in a lifetime experience that comes up every year
Seems odd. Arches only has four backcountry campsites in the whole park. 3 in Courthouse Wash, and 1 in Devil’s Garden
Wow, surprised GC is so much higher than others. I bet it includes rafting trips. There aren’t that many campgrounds in GC.
SEKI seems low considering how common it is to cross over from the east side wildernesses. I wonder if they are including an estimate for those since there is no national park permit issued — or even any way for them to definitively know that someone camped inside the park boundaries in those cases. (The same is true for Yosemite but not as common.)
Really surprised Arches is so big, too, with so few campgrounds and an environment hostile to most backpackers. Over double Zion? Hmm.
I didn’t realize you could overnight at Dry Tortuga. Definitely on the bucket list.
Camping in the everglades outside of the month of January has got to be a miserable experience
Weird that there is 0 in New Hampshire. The most forested state….
You will get carried off by mosquitos at Everglades national park.
Is Hot Springs NP in AR closed at night or something? Might be relocating to NWAR and am taking it as a personal challenge to change that 0 to not a 0 LOL
I most certainly camped in the Cuyahoga Valley National Park last year.
The Arch in St. Louis shouldn’t be a national park. When I think national park I don’t picture a stainless steel structure.
It could be me but it looks like canyonlands NP doesn’t have a data point
Perhaps this should be normalized for visitation?
So you’re saying that I would be the first overnight camper at the Gateway Arch? Let’s do this…
Brave souls at Congaree.
The Skeeter Meter was at a moderate level the day I visited. I wore long sleeves and pants, tucked my shirt in, and used DEET. Still got bitten to hell in about two hours.
I didn’t realize that you could camp in Acadia – best hit in the summer!
You missed US Virgin Islands and American Samoa
Way more than I would have guessed for Everglades. Mosquitoes must be insane.
I’m surprised Glacier is so low.
(And I always forget about the lack of National Parks in the middle of the country. That’s just so odd.)
Can’t believe Kings Canyon is so small. Easily some the f the most amazing backcountry in the nation. Sequoia too
The park brochure for Black Canyon of the Gunnison narrates your death while backcountry camping in the second person.
>You sleep that night beneath the Milky Way,
frothy with stars, as you’ve never seen it before.
In the morning, despite being warned of the
steep grade, poison ivy, and heat, you hike to
the river. In time the roar builds to a crescendo,
until it cancels out all other sounds. You look
warily at the 10-foot (3 m) boulders casually
scattered about. Any minute one could come
crashing down. Imagine the power and the
sharp crack as rock meets rock.
Not surprised there’s so few campers. They only issue like 10 permits per night, part of the year.
Just imagine the stats for the state parks and BLM land.
I did this in Big Bend last year, so I guess I’m one of those numbers! It’s absolutely fantastic, I highly recommend it. My friend and I got there at 11 pm and had to hike up this mountain on uneven terrain in literally the darkest area of the US, vaguely following what we were only kinda sure was the right trail. I remember we’d stop to rest our legs every so often and just quietly listen to the wind rush over the hills in silence. Such a peaceful experience. Once we got to our spot and set up tent, we scarfed down our little snacks we had brought along and told my friend, “I could be eating dog shit rn and it’d still be the best meal I’ve ever eaten.”
White Sands National park definitely has backcountry camping. Looks like it’s closed now. I guess maybe for a while.
Surprised no dot for the Okiefenokee Swamp
National Forests > Nation Parks for camping.
Easy coast people are homebodies, apparently.
Are they rolling Tahoe National, El Dorado/Desolation, all into Yosemite? Because those likely dunk on Lassen…
Edit – I guess those are National Forests and not national PARKS. Weird distinction. The forests are where the magic is at imo
Why does pinnacles have 0 overnight stays?
Missing pecos in NM! My fave back country wilderness area I’ve ever been.
I would bet more people in the Gunnison area would camp on the Grand Mesa. That’s one of the most beautiful areas in the country. You can also feed the cute ground squirrels at Land’s End too.
OP, I personally backcountry camped at Indiana Dunes NP last year so that number definitely shouldn’t be zero. They have walk-in backcountry sites just like you described as the metric (Central Ave Walk-In Sites for example).
![[OC] Backcountry Camping at each US National Park](https://www.europesays.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/r2xnhli4wq4f1-1920x1024.jpeg)
33 comments
Source: https://www.nps.gov/subjects/socialscience/visitor-use-statistics-dashboard.htm
Made in ArcPro
Overnight Stay: One night within a park by a visitor. A party of 2 visitors staying over for 3 nights yields 6 overnight stays.
Very cool map but I’m pretty sure petrified forest NP has 0 spots as it’s closed at night.
There’s a lot of good camping spots in grand canyon park but I assume most of those numbers are the river
You should go do it. Put your name in the drawing its a once in a lifetime experience that comes up every year
Seems odd. Arches only has four backcountry campsites in the whole park. 3 in Courthouse Wash, and 1 in Devil’s Garden
Wow, surprised GC is so much higher than others. I bet it includes rafting trips. There aren’t that many campgrounds in GC.
SEKI seems low considering how common it is to cross over from the east side wildernesses. I wonder if they are including an estimate for those since there is no national park permit issued — or even any way for them to definitively know that someone camped inside the park boundaries in those cases. (The same is true for Yosemite but not as common.)
Really surprised Arches is so big, too, with so few campgrounds and an environment hostile to most backpackers. Over double Zion? Hmm.
I didn’t realize you could overnight at Dry Tortuga. Definitely on the bucket list.
Camping in the everglades outside of the month of January has got to be a miserable experience
Weird that there is 0 in New Hampshire. The most forested state….
You will get carried off by mosquitos at Everglades national park.
Is Hot Springs NP in AR closed at night or something? Might be relocating to NWAR and am taking it as a personal challenge to change that 0 to not a 0 LOL
I most certainly camped in the Cuyahoga Valley National Park last year.
The Arch in St. Louis shouldn’t be a national park. When I think national park I don’t picture a stainless steel structure.
It could be me but it looks like canyonlands NP doesn’t have a data point
Perhaps this should be normalized for visitation?
So you’re saying that I would be the first overnight camper at the Gateway Arch? Let’s do this…
Brave souls at Congaree.
The Skeeter Meter was at a moderate level the day I visited. I wore long sleeves and pants, tucked my shirt in, and used DEET. Still got bitten to hell in about two hours.
I didn’t realize that you could camp in Acadia – best hit in the summer!
You missed US Virgin Islands and American Samoa
Way more than I would have guessed for Everglades. Mosquitoes must be insane.
I’m surprised Glacier is so low.
(And I always forget about the lack of National Parks in the middle of the country. That’s just so odd.)
Can’t believe Kings Canyon is so small. Easily some the f the most amazing backcountry in the nation. Sequoia too
The park brochure for Black Canyon of the Gunnison narrates your death while backcountry camping in the second person.
>You sleep that night beneath the Milky Way,
frothy with stars, as you’ve never seen it before.
In the morning, despite being warned of the
steep grade, poison ivy, and heat, you hike to
the river. In time the roar builds to a crescendo,
until it cancels out all other sounds. You look
warily at the 10-foot (3 m) boulders casually
scattered about. Any minute one could come
crashing down. Imagine the power and the
sharp crack as rock meets rock.
Not surprised there’s so few campers. They only issue like 10 permits per night, part of the year.
Just imagine the stats for the state parks and BLM land.
I did this in Big Bend last year, so I guess I’m one of those numbers! It’s absolutely fantastic, I highly recommend it. My friend and I got there at 11 pm and had to hike up this mountain on uneven terrain in literally the darkest area of the US, vaguely following what we were only kinda sure was the right trail. I remember we’d stop to rest our legs every so often and just quietly listen to the wind rush over the hills in silence. Such a peaceful experience. Once we got to our spot and set up tent, we scarfed down our little snacks we had brought along and told my friend, “I could be eating dog shit rn and it’d still be the best meal I’ve ever eaten.”
White Sands National park definitely has backcountry camping. Looks like it’s closed now. I guess maybe for a while.
Surprised no dot for the Okiefenokee Swamp
National Forests > Nation Parks for camping.
Easy coast people are homebodies, apparently.
Are they rolling Tahoe National, El Dorado/Desolation, all into Yosemite? Because those likely dunk on Lassen…
Edit – I guess those are National Forests and not national PARKS. Weird distinction. The forests are where the magic is at imo
Why does pinnacles have 0 overnight stays?
Missing pecos in NM! My fave back country wilderness area I’ve ever been.
I would bet more people in the Gunnison area would camp on the Grand Mesa. That’s one of the most beautiful areas in the country. You can also feed the cute ground squirrels at Land’s End too.
OP, I personally backcountry camped at Indiana Dunes NP last year so that number definitely shouldn’t be zero. They have walk-in backcountry sites just like you described as the metric (Central Ave Walk-In Sites for example).
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