Celebrating nation's treasures on 4th of July

Celebrating 4th of July by celebrating nation’s priceless treasures.

It was six score and sixteen ago a historic bill was passed by U.S. Senate and Congress and then signed into law by President Grant. That act of 1st March, 1872 created “… a public park … for the benefit and enjoyment of the people,” from a large swath of land more than 150 times the size of Manhattan. A priceless natural wonder of uncommon natural beauty came into being in the territories of Montana and Wyoming, mainly due to the efforts of Hayden and his expedition team. Known the world over as Yellow Stone National park, its the grand daddy of 370 National parks in the U.S. and nearly 1,200 such parks scattered among 100 or so nations across the globe.

What started as a unique dedication to the people of the U.S. soon found ardent advocates among the likes of Teddy Roosevelt and others. And by 1916 culminated in the establishment of National Park service (NPS). The NPS has grown over the years to include hundreds of national parks, monuments, historical sites that represent the exceptional history and unique culture of the U.S. and its people. The NPS also includes quite a few national parks that celebrate prehistoric times which on a geological time scale would be equivalent of earth going through its “preteen” years.

Additionally, the National Register maintains an active database of “76,000 districts, sites, buildings, structures, and objects that are significant in American history, architecture, archeology, engineering, and culture.”

It is evident from the huge numbers of visits to parks that people value the national park system. According to the NPS statistics, in 2006, there were nearly half billion visits (439 million) to different parks and monuments across the U.S. We at FortiusOne decided to explore which NPS sites are the most popular. Our data team compiled the <a href="visits database by month and by year from the NPS website. The heat map below shows total number of annual visits for a subset of sites from the NPS database. Washington monument draws the highest number of visits by month and by year. By contrast, Yellow Stone, the oldest among these parks is not the most desired destination for park visitors, however, it does make it to the list top ten sites. The other sites with no particular order but with large number of visits are, Great Smoky mountains, Blue ridge, Natchez Trace and Golden Gate. Explore national parks on the map and search for visits by month data on the Geocommons.

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