The Pandemic-Era National Park Boom

The Pandemic-Era National Park Boom

This article relates to Adult Braces

If Bo Burnham's Inside captured the feeling of pandemic-induced isolation in 2020, Lindy West's memoir Adult Braces taps into the one that possessed many Americans the year after: the urge to get out of the house.

As she describes herself setting out on a cross-country odyssey in 2021, West explains her need to escape—a need that many across the country were also feeling at that time, if for different reasons. The National Parks Service reported record visitor counts at Yellowstone, Arches National Park, and other well-known sites, with corresponding business booms in gateway communities around the parks. On Michigan's gorgeous Upper Peninsula, which West decides to skip on her own trip, the Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore saw a jump from 4 million pre-pandemic visitors to 7 million in 2022.

There were factors other than COVID-19 in West's desire to escape Seattle—her marriage troubles chief among them—but the specter of disease hangs over the narrative in Adult Braces. When West encounters a family who seem to be more politically aligned with her than others she's met at a red-state stop, they immediately discuss their horror at how few masks they've seen since leaving Minneapolis. At a KOA campsite, a stranger complains that West's shower made the bathroom floor wet for others—an interaction that takes on a more aggressive tenor when viewed in light of anti-masking complaints of inconvenience and calls for individual freedom versus collective security. An ICU nurse tells Lindy of her need to travel alone, after all she's seen, to feel close to God again.

While there were multiple factors contributing to the 2021 surge in national park visitation—economic expansion after the Great Recession; a promotional campaign celebrating NPS' centennial—a primary driver likely had something to do with people's desperation to look at something other than a buffering Zoom call. Businesses associated with hiking and camping saw a steep incline in sales (pun intended) as more people began participating in outdoor recreation; surveys by the Outdoor Foundation estimate that the number of hikers grew by 23% and the number of campers grew by 30% between 2019 and 2023.

That boom has persisted through to 2026 in many locations, with current attendance numbers at many NPS locations still higher than pre-pandemic levels, though factors like flooding and price increases have tempered the rise. The already popular parks—like Badlands National Park in South Dakota, which saw eight percent more visitors in September 2024 than in September 2019—were the ones that benefited most from the boom; less popular sites have seen their visitor numbers decrease.

In recent years, National Parks have suffered from overtourism, straining under the increase in visitors and corresponding need to manage risks, like crowds congregating on small trails. Preexisting staffing and funding shortfalls have been brought into clearer focus—several parks in Utah, for example, reported extreme trail erosion and damage to natural landmarks, harm that requires expensive repair and maintenance efforts to mitigate. And today, the NPS reports a $22 billion deferred maintenance backlog. Despite this, by May 2025, thousands of seasonal workers, over one thousand probationary employees, and over 1,700 permanent employees had been laid off under the Trump administration's Department of Government Efficiency-led workforce cuts, leaving the National Parks Service with a 25% smaller workforce to deal with those larger crowds.

Image by Palacemusic, CC BY-SA 3.0 Unported.

Filed under People, Eras & Events

This article relates to Adult Braces. It first ran in the May 6, 2026 issue of BookBrowse Recommends.