Colorado has long been home to one of America’s top five most-visited national parks ー but not in 2025. 

According to National Park Service data for the year recently released, Rocky Mountain National Park fell to the sixth spot behind Great Smoky Mountains, Zion, Yellowstone, Grand Canyon and Yosemite national parks. 

Rocky Mountain National Park logged 4.1 million visits last year, according to the latest data. The year-to-year count was up from 2024 but still in line with numbers the park has maintained in recent years since instituting a summertime reservation system. Prior to that system aimed at crowd control, Rocky Mountain had ranked as high as third in visitation among all national parks. 

Yosemite logged nearly 107,000 more visits than Rocky Mountain National Park in 2025. Yosemite is joining other national parks in dropping its reservation system this summer, as previously announced, while Rocky Mountain is returning timed-entry permits.

Colorado’s busiest national park reported a slight uptick in visits year-to-year while the state’s three others marked decreases. That’s in line with broad trends reported by the National Park Service, which in announcing the new data noted the longest-ever partial government shutdown that altered operations last year. 

Across 400-plus parks, monuments, recreation areas and other designated sites, the National Park Service tallied 323 million visits in 2025. That was down from a record of nearly 332 million visits reported in 2024. 

In Colorado, visitation was down at Mesa Verde (463,130), Great Sand Dunes (432,498) and Black Canyon of the Gunnison (250,086) national parks. 

The drop was starkest at Black Canyon of the Gunnison, which tallied its lowest visitation in 10 years due to the wildfire that closed the park last summer. The fire also impacted the surrounding Curecanti National Recreation Area, which logged 807,117 visits last year, down 17% from 2024.

Year to year, Mesa Verde’s visitation was 3.5% percent down, while Great Sand Dunes counted 5,163 fewer visits. The 2025 dips continue downward trends since record surges amid the COVID-19 pandemic in 2021. 

The same trends have been seen at the state’s national monuments. They also reported year-to-year dips in 2025, including Colorado (483,436 visits), Dinosaur (315,725) and Florissant Fossil Beds (63,680) national monuments. 

The National Park Service has listed 13 units in Colorado ー including national historic sites ー that have driven $1.2 billion in annual economic output. This was according to a previous study and estimates that ranked Colorado 15th among all states for visitor spending at $817 million a year.