Wisconsin’s Devil’s Lake State Park is on pace to set record attendance totals this year.
The Baraboo New Republic reported that visitation to the state’s most popular state park has increased by nearly 50% since 2010, going from 1.7 million annual visitors at the time to 2.6 million in 2016, according to estimates from the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources. Steve Schmelzer, the park’s superintendent, said he expects the ascent to continue in 2017.
“We’re right in the neighborhood of 2.8 million (visitors) right now,” Schmelzer said. “Last year through October it was 2.6 million visitors, so we’re a couple hundred thousand visitors up. Almost every year we’ve had more visitation than the previous.”
Schmelzer said he’s not sure what exactly is driving the attendance increase, but added that the trend is in step with national parks. He said the increased prevalence of social media and location sharing may have influenced the record count.
“Parks in general are getting more popular and more usage,” Schmelzer said. “If you look at attendance data for national parks, it has also increased substantially.”
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