great smokies is top money generating national park service unit

According to a recently-released National Park Service (NPS) study, Great Smoky Mountains National Park is not only the nation’s most visited national park, it also tops the 388 national park units in visitor spending.  The study estimates that in 2005 the Park’s 9.2 million visitors spent over $652 million ($685 million in 2006) in the gateway communities surrounding the Park. The study also estimates that over 14,000 local jobs (12,600 jobs in 2006) were supported by Park visitor spending.
In November 2004, National Park Service Director, Fran Mainella, asked for an annual report of the economic impacts of National Parks beginning with Fiscal Year 2005. The study was conducted by Dr. James Gramann, a social scientist at Texas A&M University who is the Visiting Chief Social Scientist for the National Park Service.  
The resulting study, “FY 2005 Economic Benefits of National Parks” provides a state-by-state breakdown of each park unit’s visitation, visitor spending, and local jobs supported at NPS units from Alaska to the Virgin Islands. The top five NPS units in terms of spending generated were Great Smokies (TN/NC) with $652 million, Grand Canyon (AZ) at $416 million, Yosemite (CA) with $317 million, Yellowstone (MT/WY/ID) at $298 million, and the Blue Ridge Parkway (VA/NC) with $294 million.  
 Dr. Gramann said, “The estimates in this study represent dollars that enter a gateway economy as a direct result of a park’s presence and operation. They are an important indicator of the return on the public’s investment of tax dollars in the National Park System.”  
“This is exciting news,” said Fran Mainella, Director of the National Park Service. “The bottom line of the study is American taxpayers in 2005 spent $2.6 billion on the National Park System and the return on their investment was more than $12 billion.”
While the economic benefits of National Parks are good news, Mainella said, “The National Park System is much more than an economic development engine. National Parks are here for our enjoyment. They preserve our natural resource heritage, our cultural heritage, in sum, our national heritage.”
Smokies Superintendent Dale Ditmanson said,  “When community leaders in Tennessee and North Carolina sought to create this national park early in the last century, many were concerned primarily about preserving a vanishing portion of the scenic and biologically significant Appalachian Mountains. Those preservation-minded individuals were teamed up with those who saw the creation of a national park as an economic magnet.”
“Fortunately, both interests got what they wanted.” Ditmanson concluded, “Early planners recognized that nearly all of the infrastructure to serve the new visitors could be developed outside the Park. By choosing not to build hotels, restaurants, gas stations and the like inside the Park, we have been able to minimize the impact of those facilities on the Park while maximizing the opportunity for local communities to offer whatever goods and service visitors might want or need.”    
The spending estimates at each park were derived from a money generation model that begins with a park’s visitation, party size, length of stay, and proportion of local vs. non-local visitors. Those statistics are combined with locally-indexed cost estimates for restaurants, lodging, amusements, locally-purchased fuel and transportation, and retail spending.  
At Great Smoky Mountains National Park the spending estimates were broken down as follows: 14% of Park visitors were local day-trip visitors who spent an average of $28 per party, 22% were non-local people visiting for a day and spending $93 per group, 53% were overnight guests staying outside the Park in hotels and spending $243 per party per night, and 11% were parties who camped either in or outside the Park and spent, on average, $130 per night for the group.