Grand Canyon National Park

Grand Canyon National Park is a national park in north-western Arizona, the fifteenth site to be named a national park in the United States. Its central feature is the Grand Canyon, a mile-deep gorge cut by the Colorado River through layered rock spanning roughly two billion years of geological history. The park covers 1,217,262 acres of unincorporated land in Coconino and Mohave counties and received more than 4.9 million recreational visitors in 2024. The South Rim is open year-round and holds most of the park's lodging, shuttle routes and viewpoints; the North Rim stands over 1,000 feet higher and closes through the winter. UNESCO designated the canyon a World Heritage Site in 1979, and the park marked its centenary on 26 February 2019. It recorded 4,919,163 recreation visits in 2024.

Where it is

Grand Canyon National Park is a national park near Grand Canyon, in Coconino County. It is one of the national parks in this database, and appears in the statewide ranking of Arizona attractions.

How this ranking was reached

The score combines the published visitor count with public interest and tourism significance, which is what earns it high confidence. The weighting is explained in full on the methodology page, and every axis is broken out under Facts and sources at the foot of this page.

Mentioned in

• Arizona protects its night sky in one set of places and uses it in another — Eight Arizona attractions hold International Dark Sky Park status and all eight publish visitor counts; twelve working observatories publish none.
• Arizona has three national parks, and one of them takes 77 per cent of the visits — Grand Canyon recorded 4,919,163 visits in 2024 against 1,505,623 for Saguaro and Petrified Forest combined — more than three times the other two together.
• The county with the most attractions publishes no visitor numbers at all — Maricopa County holds 162 of Arizona's attractions, more than any other, and not one of them carries an official visitor count.

Sources

• Visitation: National Park Service Visitor Use Statistics(opens in a new tab)
• Public interest: Wikimedia pageviews (en.wikipedia, human traffic), 2024
• Coordinates and designations: Wikidata(opens in a new tab)
• County: U.S. Census geography via FCC Area API, resolved from coordinates
• Official site: https://nps.gov/grca(opens in a new tab)

Record last verified 2026-08-12.