Glossary & Web Resources

ACAD 274 — Written/Encoded by: Jackson D. Kaul

National Park Glossary

National Park
The highest and most restrictive land designation the National Park Service grants, created by an act of Congress to protect an area's scenery, wildlife, or natural features largely undisturbed. There are 63 of them, out of 433 total NPS-managed units.
Recreation Visit
The NPS's official counting unit: one person entering a park for recreational purposes, counted once per entry regardless of how long they stay. It is the figure behind every visitation number in this dataset.
Visitors per 1,000 Acres
Not an official NPS statistic — a figure calculated for this site by dividing a park's annual recreation visits by its acreage (in thousands). It approximates crowd density, though it breaks down for very small parks (see the Data Table methodology).
Wilderness Area
A federally designated zone within a park, protected under the 1964 Wilderness Act, where roads, motor vehicles, and permanent structures are prohibited.
Backcountry Permit
A required, often limited-quantity permit for overnight stays away from a park's developed campgrounds — the mechanism most parks use to cap how many people can be in the backcountry on a given night.
Timed-Entry Reservation
A separate reservation, on top of the entrance fee, required to enter a park (or a section of one) during specific hours on the busiest days. Zion, Arches, and Glacier have all used versions of this system in recent peak seasons.
Fee-Free Day
One of a handful of dates set each year on which the NPS waives entrance fees system-wide, including at parks that normally charge $30–$35 per vehicle.

Web Resources for Park Planning

Below are the primary NPS sources behind this site's numbers, plus planning tools for turning the data into an actual trip.

NPS Visitor Use Statistics

Landing page: Visitor Use Statistics Dashboard — the official source for every acreage and visitation figure used on this site, broken down by park and by month back to 1979.

NPS System Overview

Landing page: National Park System overview — explains how the "National Park" designation differs from monuments, preserves, seashores, and the other 400+ units the NPS manages.

NPS Fees & Passes

Landing page: Entrance fees and passes — current fee schedules, the America the Beautiful annual pass, and this year's fee-free dates.

Recreation.gov

Landing page: Recreation.gov — the official booking site for timed-entry reservations, backcountry permits, and campgrounds at the busiest parks in this dataset, including Zion, Arches, and Glacier.

Visitation and acreage figures compiled from the National Park Service Visitor Use Statistics Program. Entrance fees reflect the standard published NPS fee schedule and are subject to change.