Every year when data surrounding visits to US National Parks is published, there’s one clear winner: Great Smoky Mountains National Park. With as many as 12 million visitors each year, this park comes in lightyears ahead of the next busiest parks – Grand Canyon, Zion and Rocky Mountain which see less than five million annual visitors. But why is it so popular? After all, it lacks the sandstone towers of Canyonlands or the breathtaking geysers of Yellowstone.
Well, for starters, location is everything. This forested park straddles the border between North Carolina and Tennessee, sharing its vast 522,000 acres roughly equally over the two states. This places it within a day’s drive of about two-thirds of the US population, which makes it an appealing road trip in a country that loves to drive. It’s also one of the National Parks that’s free to visit, which is definitely a bonus, but if we’re being honest, convenience and cost are far from the whole story.
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