This Land, Your Land

Visitation to Great Smoky Mountains National Park fell by 4.8 percent from the previous year to just top 9 million in 2011, the Knoxville News Sentinel said today.

A years long decrease in camping at "frontcountry," or developed, campgrounds also continued.

Overall park visitation for 2011 was 9,008,831, down from 2010's tally of 9,463,538 visitors. A surge in visits during a mild December - 37.7 percent more than the last month of 2010 - kept the count from falling below 9 million, the newspaper's report says.

Park officials told the newspaper that visits to the Great Smokies may have risen in 2010 as vacationers avoided the Gulf after the BP oil spill, and then fallen last year after the spill had been cleaned up.

In reflection of a national trend, use of frontcountry campgrounds in the park has fallen 33 percent since 1995, plunging to 277,000 camper nights last year from 416,000 camper nights 16 years ago.

But the park's 90,444 backcountry camper nights in 2011 represented an increase from the 79,480 backcountry camper nights recorded in 2010.

The 800-square-mile park, which sits between Cherokee at its main North Carolina entrance and Gatlinburg at its main Tennessee entrance, is still the top national park for economic impact, the newspaper said.

Visits to Great Smoky Mountains National Park peaked at just over 10 million in 1999 and 2000, the News Sentinel said.