News Release

2023 Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore Visitation Statistics

Visitors at Log Slide

News Release Date: February 27, 2024

Contact: Hannah Bradburn, [phone]

Munising, MICHIGAN — Earlier this week, the National Park Service announced that 400 national parks reported a total of 325.5 million visits in 2023.

Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore saw 910,939 total visitors in 2023. This is a 1.5% decrease from 2022 visitation, and a 30% decrease from 2021, when the park saw its highest visitation of 1.3 million visitors.

Though overall visitation to Pictured Rocks decreased slightly in 2023, the overarching trend is that visitation to the park is increasing. Since 2010, visitation has nearly doubled, as has the number of campers.

In 2023, backcountry camping at Pictured Rocks saw its second-largest year on record at Pictured Rocks with over 30,000 campers. Drive-in camping decreased slightly in 2023.

Some areas in the park, such as the Chapel Loop and Munising Falls, saw increased visitation in comparison to 2022. Other areas saw slight decreases in visitation in 2023, including Miners Castle and Twelvemile Beach.

Pictured Rocks has been updating park facilities to keep up with increasing visitation, including replacing septic fields, installing new toilet facilities, and improving accessibility features. Pictured Rocks has also been making efforts to protect natural resources from the impacts of increasing visitor numbers – such as by revegetating damaged areas and informing visitors of practices to keep invasive species out of the park.

For more information on National Park Service visitation statistics, please visit the Visitor Use Statistics Dashboard on NPS.gov: https://www.nps.gov/subjects/socialscience/visitor-use-statistics-dashboard.htm Visitor Use Statistics can also be found at this site: https://irma.nps.gov/Stats.

910,939 visitors made a physical trip to Pictured Rocks in 2023, but millions more visited Pictured Rocks’ website, social media, and the NPS App. Keep up with the park online at www.nps.gov/piro or on Facebook @PicturedRocksNL and Instagram @picturedrocksnps.