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Jamestown, Yorktown National Park Sites Recovering from Pandemic

More people visited Colonial National Historical Park in 2021 than the previous year. However, the visitation numbers weren’t as high as before the pandemic.

As per a report, the total number of visits to Jamestown and Yorktown park sites was 3.11 million–up from 2.9 million in 2020, but still not back to the pre-pandemic level of 3.33 million visitors in 2019, according to a recently released National Park Service economic contributions report.

Colonial National Historical Park includes Historic Jamestown, the Yorktown Battlefield, and the 23-mile Colonial Parkway that stretches from the James River at Jamestown to the York River at Yorktown.

National parks are a vital part of our nation’s economy, especially for park gateway communities where millions of visitors each year find a place to sleep and eat and make use of local services that help drive a vibrant tourism and outdoor recreation industry,” said park Superintendent Jerri Marr in a news release.

According to the report, visitors were able to spend $336.8 in 2021 across the parks’ gateway communities. The figure increased from $301.1 million for 2020 but was slightly lower than the 2019 spending of $337.4 million.

The number of full- and part-time jobs supported by visitor spending was among the other economic factors that rebounded last year. There were 5,039 jobs involved in 2021, compared with 4,549 jobs in 2020 and 5,104 jobs in 2019.

The local economic output, which measures the total estimated value of the production of goods and services supported by the park visitor spending, was $453.1 million last year against $378.3 million in 2020 and significantly ahead of $423.5 million in 2019.

In total, 297 million recreational visits in 2021 were up 25% from 2020, with an estimated $20.5 billion spent in local gateway regions, up 41% from 2020.

In Virginia, of the 18 major National Park service elements, battlefields, national monuments, parkways, and historical parks, there were 22.2 million recreational visits in 2021, compared to 20.5 million in 2020 and 22.8 million in 2019.

Visitors to parks in Virginia in 2021 spent $1.3 billion in gateway regions. This is compared to $1.1 billion by 2020 and $1.2 billion in 2019. In the employment sector, there were 18,000 jobs in 2021 related to national park visitors, while in 2020, the number was 15,900 and 17,300 in 2019.

Virginia ranked third in spending associated with national parks behind California and North Carolina and fourth in jobs (full and part-time jobs supported by NPS visitor spending), labor income (supported by NPS visitor spending), value added (measured contributions of NPS visitors to a region’s gross domestic product) and economic output (the estimated value of the production of goods and services supported by NPS visitor spending) behind California, North Carolina and Utah.

To learn more about Colonial National Historical Park, visit www.nps.gov/colo/index.htm.

This story originally appeared on Pilot Online. Featured image from Colonial National Historical Park.

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Hi, you might find this article from Modern Campground interesting: Jamestown, Yorktown National Park Sites Recovering from Pandemic! This is the link: https://moderncampground.com/usa/virginia/jamestown-yorktown-national-park-sites-recovering-from-pandemic/