Lava flows at Hawai'i Volcanoes National Park, which largely was closed for four months in 2018/USGS

Editor's note: This updates with NPS comment on decline.

Volcanics, no solar eclipse, and wildfires no doubt all played a role in the decline of visitation to the National Park System in 2018, when slightly more than 318 million visits were recorded, a drop of 13 million from the year before when a record 330.8 million visited the parks.

After all, much of Hawai'i Volcanoes National Park was closed to the public for four months in 2018 while the Kīlauea volcano spewed lava and fractured the surrounding landscape with earthquakes; smoke and flames from the Ferguson wildfire closed the Yosemite Valley for more than two weeks last summer, and; unlike 2017, when huge crowds ventured to Grand Teton, Great Smoky Mountains, and other national park properties to view the solar eclipse, there was no similar astronomical event in 2018.

"The decline was throughout the year - visitation was down in 10 of the 12 months, and the other two (May and June) were statistically flat compared to last year," National Park Service spokesman Mike Litterest told the Traveler in an email Tuesday. "The biggest factor seems to be Mother Nature and closures associated with natural disasters: the South Florida and Caribbean parks had lingering closures from hurricanes Irma and Harvey; most of Hawai'i Volcanoes National Park was closed for more than four months due to the eruption of Kilauea; Yosemite, Santa Monica Mountains (NRA) and Whiskeytown (NRA) had full or partial closures due to wildfires in the summer and fall; and rainy weather impacted visitation to parks in the mid-Atlantic (Delaware Water Gap, Shenandoah and Blue Ridge Parkway specifically mentioned this)."

The year-end partial government shutdown likely tamped down normal visitation for that time of year, too. Still, some of the 418 units of the National Park System experienced huge crowds in 2018. 

* Yellowstone National Park in Wyoming counted 4.1 million visitors last year; not a record, but still a lot;

* Grand Teton National Park in western Wyoming counted a record 3.5 million, up from 3.3 million in 2017;

* Zion National Park in southwestern Utah counted 4.3 million, down from the record 4.5 million in 2017;

* Rocky Mountain National Park in Colorado counted a record 4.59 million;

* the Blue Ridge Parkway tallied 14.7 million, not a record, but an awful lot just the same;

* Great Smoky Mountains National Park in Tennessee and North Carolina counted a record 11.4 million;

* Yosemite National Park in California saw just a bit more than 4 million visitors, down from 4.3 million in 2017;

* Glacier National Park in Montana saw 2.9 million, off a bit from 2017's 3.3 million head count;

* Grand Canyon National Park recorded a record 6.38 million;

* Arches National Park in southeastern Utah saw a record 1.66 million; 

* Cape Hatteras National Seashore on North Carolina's Outer Banks counted a record 2.59 million;

* Acadia National Park in Maine saw a record 3.5 million.

You can find your favorite park's 2018 visitation numbers at this website.