The top 10 most visited US National Park sites in 2021 are …

(CNN) — Stir-crazy from the pandemic, visitors poured into US national parks and related sites last year — and they especially paid calls to the marquee names.

The NPS said that last year’s visitation increased by 60 million over 2020. That’s when Covid-19 closed facilities in most parks for at least part of the year. Across the entire National Park System, the numbers still remained below pre-pandemic totals.

However, it was a different story for the best-known sites, which were inundated with visitors. Forty-four places actually set a record for recreation visits in 2021.

Top 10 most visited sites

Of 423 sites in the National Park System, the top 25 got more than half of the system’s total number of visits.

These were the top 10 for 2021, which includes national parks but also parkways, recreation areas, memorials and related sites (figures are rounded off):

1. Blue Ridge Parkway: 15.9 million

2. Great Smoky Mountains National Park: 14.1 million

3. Golden Gate National Recreation Area: 13.7 million

4. Gateway National Recreation Area: 9.1 million

5. Lake Mead National Recreation Area: 7.6 million

6. George Washington Memorial Parkway: 6.8 million

7. Natchez Trace Parkway: 6.4 million

8. Lincoln Memorial: 5.8 million

9. Gulf Islands National Seashore: 5.5 million

10. Zion National Park: 5 million

The Blue Ridge Parkway, which covers 469 miles in the Appalachians of North Carolina and Virginia, kept its title of the most-visited site in the system.

Great Smoky Mountains National Park set a visitation record for 2021, passing 14 million recreation visits for the first time, NPS said in its report.

Top 10 national parks

The Bass Harbor Lighthouse is seen at sunset at Acadia National Park in Maine.

f11photo/Adobe Stock

Of those 400+ sites in the entire system, only 63 of them are actually designated a “national park.” These are most visited national parks of 2021 (figures are rounded off):

1. Great Smoky Mountains National Park: 14.16 million

2. Zion National Park: 5.03 million

3. Yellowstone National Park: 4.86 million

4. Grand Canyon National Park: 4.53 million

5. Rocky Mountain National Park: 4.43 million

6. Acadia National Park: 4.06 million

7. Grand Teton National Park: 3.88 million

8. Yosemite National Park: 3.28 million

9. Indiana Dunes National Park: 3.17 million

10. Glacier National Park: 3.08 million

NPS to visitors: Let’s spread it out

Along with measures to regulate crowding at the most popular places, the NPS is also trying to steer people toward the parks that aren’t setting records.

“It’s wonderful to see so many…