State parks saw nearly 10 million more visitors in 2020
Nearly 10 million more visitors came to Pennsylvania’s 121 state parks last year, looking for a way to get out of the house in a safe way.
Cindy Adams Dunn, state secretary of the Department of Conservation and Natural Resources (DCNR), said she’s hopeful getting outdoors is a habit that will stick with people.
“From the very beginning of the pandemic, we’ve seen people flocking to the outdoors,” Dunn said during a recent Facebook Live discussion. “The good news for us is that we met new people who haven’t come to state parks before, and that habit will stay with people.”
Pennsylvania is home to 121 state parks, including Ohiopyle State Park in Fayette County. The state also boasts 2.2 million acres of state forest land, 83,000 miles of rivers and streams, and over 11,000 miles of trails.
While 2020’s attendance at Ohiopyle wasn’t officially a park record, it was significantly higher than previous years, and one of the busiest in the past two decades, according to longtime workers. Automated traffic counters placed at parking lot entrances across the park tracked 1,367,153 people visited the park in 2020.
In 2019, an estimated 868,618 people visited the park.
Dunn noted a DCNR poll that found four out of five Pennsylvanians who visited parks and trails during the pandemic believe that time spent outdoors was essential to their physical and mental health.
First Lady Frances Wolf, who also participated in the discussion, said the pandemic gave her a new appreciation for the state’s outdoors.
“Our parks, trails, and river fronts have become places of refuge for so many of us to clear our minds and safely spend time with our loved ones,” Wolf said. “My hope is that we continue to utilize these spaces beyond the pandemic as a way to celebrate these pieces of our commonwealth.”
According to the state DCNR, Pennsylvania state-park attendance increased from 37 million visitors in 2019 to nearly 47 million in 2020, a 27% jump.
Matt Galluzzo, the president and CEO of Riverlife and the regional ambassador of One Lens Southeast, said the use of trails across Pennsylvania spiked by 62% and other record-number of turnouts have been seen at the riverfront trails, parks and watercraft areas.
“Every aspect of our work over the past year has been colored by the COVID-19 pandemic, which has been difficult in so many ways for so many people,” Galluzzo said. “It has reinforced the importance of our work–public outdoor spaces are essential.”