Shenandoah National Park visitation down

View larger image A car travels along this portion of Skyline Drive south of Dickey Ridge Visitor Center recently. Rich Cooley/Daily

Decline attributed to October snowfall

By Kim Walter -- kwalter@nvdaily.com

FRONT ROYAL -- Visitation in Shenandoah National Park was down in 2011 compared to the previous year, largely because of the snowy weather in October.

Visitation in the park was down by 3.4 percent compared with 2010, according to public affairs officer Karen Beck-Herzog. A total of 1,220,847 visitors came to the park, she said.

"It's a good number, but it's down a bit from last year," Beck-Herzog said. "We started with a very strong year."

October, which normally is among the strongest months for visitation, showed a 15 percent decline, she said. She attributed the drop to the 11 inches of snow the park saw in October.

"Weather is probably the biggest factor in determining visitation," she said.

Also showing a decline last year was the number of visitors using the Front Royal entrance to the park, Beck-Herzog said. For years, the town was the most popular entrance point for the park but the number of people entering there last year was down 15 percent.

"Overall, there's a greater rise in the number of people using Thorton Gap as an entrance point," she said. Thornton Gap, which is near the park's headquarters in Luray, is another key entry point to the Skyline Drive, which runs the entire length of the park.

While there were fewer visitors to the park than in 2010, Beck-Herzog pointed out that 2011's numbers are higher than in 2009, when the park saw about 1,130,000 tourists.
She's glad that, unlike many national parks, Shenandoah National Park isn't seeing a steady decline in visitors.

Last year was the park's 75th anniversary, and while Beck-Herzog thought this normally would have boosted visitation "weather was just a major issue."

She hopes awareness of the anniversary will continue to bring visitors to the park throughout 2012.

"We'd always love to see more people," she said.