Over Seven Million Visitors

A new National Park Service (NPS) report shows that 7,491,112  visitors came to national park sites in Georgia, and spent $378 million in the state in 2014. That spending resulted in 6,216 jobs and had a cumulative benefit to the state economy of $531.7 million.

The national parks sites in Georgia are  Andersonville National Historic Site, Chattahoochee River National Recreational Area, Chickamauga & Chattanooga National Military Park, Cumberland Island National Seashore, Fort Frederica National Monument, Fort Pulaski National Monument, Jimmy Carter National Historic Site, Kennesaw Mountain National Battlefield Park, Martin Luther King Jr National Historic Site, and Ocmulgee National Monument.

The peer-reviewed visitor spending analysis was conducted by U.S. Geological Survey economists Catherine Cullinane Thomas and Christopher Huber and National Park Service economist Lynne Koontz. Nationally the report shows $15.7 billion of direct spending by 292.8 million park visitors occurred in communities within 60 miles of a national park. This spending supported 277,000 jobs nationally; 235,600 of those jobs are found in these gateway communities. The cumulative benefit to the U.S. economy was $29.7 billion.

According to the 2014 report, most park visitor spending was for lodging (30.6 percent) followed by food and beverages (20.3 percent), gas and oil (11.9 percent), admissions and fees (10.2 percent) and souvenirs and other expenses (9.9 percent).