There’s never been any doubt that the Appalachian Trail is popular. But now it’s clear that this trail sees more visitors than the most popular national parks in the U.S.
Thanks to creative data gathering by the Appalachian Trail Conservancy (ATC) and National Park Service (NPS), we now know that the trail had 16.9 million visits in 2025. That’s more than any single site within the national park system last year. It’s more than the Blue Ridge Parkway (16.5 million), the Golden Gate National Recreation Area (15.7 million), and the Great Smoky Mountains National Park (11.5 million).
To be fair, only about one-third of the 2,190-mile Appalachian Trail (AT) is on lands managed by the NPS. But if you only count the 6.2 million visitors to those sections, the Appalachian National Scenic Trail still ranks as the ninth-most-popular site in the park system.
“The final number was surprising,” Monica Mogilewsky, the ATC’s visitor use management data manager, told GearJunkie. “I don’t know that any of us quite predicted that many visits to the trail.”
This is the first year that data is available about the number of AT visitors. And it’s because the conservancy was able to draw on information from a surprising source: the cellphones of people hiking on the trail.
Clocking Visitors on an Open Trail
Anecdotally, it’s perhaps not surprising that the Appalachian Trail — when viewed in its totality — would top the visitation of any other outdoor destination in the country. After all, it’s the longest hike-only trail in the country, and it’s easily accessible to people in many of the nation’s most populous states.
But raw numbers like this can make a big difference when it’s time to lobby for federal funding, or when media organizations (like GearJunkie) write articles about bucket-list destinations, or the most popular places to travel.
So how did the Appalachian Trail Conservancy manage to calculate reliable visitation for a trail with literally thousands of access points? The answer is fascinating, and relatively simple: They used databases for the location data of our cellphones.
Data Methodology
To ascertain the number of visitors on such a huge trail, the conservancy relied on two databases that gather mobile location data from cellphones. These databases can calculate visitors to a particular area by looking at how many cellphones’ GPS showed up there over the course of a year.
For starters, the conservancy used one such database shared by the National Park Service, and also paid for a second one. This allowed them to compare the two visitation estimates, which only showed a difference of 8%.
To further review the data, the conservancy hired about a dozen “ridge runners.” These workers often spent 4 days a week on the trail, counting daily visitors to the trail’s most popular sections.
“What does 40 people on a Monday really mean in terms of total visitors? Calculating that is not a super-easy thing to do,” Mogilewsky said.
Finally, the conservancy also included the visitor data from parks that include the AT, including Shenandoah and Great Smoky Mountains national parks, as well as Baxter State Park in Maine.
This combination of data points allowed the conservancy to arrive at a reliable count of visits, defined spending 30+ minutes on the trail in a single day for the purpose of recreating. So a thru-hiker on the trail for 3 months would account for roughly 90 visits, for example. But the vast majority of visits are still from day hikes.
A Trail Worth Maintaining
Visitation to the AT represents more than a simple vindication of its popularity, however. It also underscores how effectively the trail has been managed, Mogilewsky told GearJunkie.
Its massive size results in many layers of federal, state, and local oversight and makes ongoing maintenance a complicated endeavor. Despite nearly 17 million visitors — and continuing damage from hurricanes and other natural disasters — the trail is still doing pretty great, Mogilewsky said.
“One of the things that impressed me so much is how well the AT is doing. That’s a lot of people. That is a lot of feet,” she said. “And the AT not only persists, but is thriving.”
There are so many institutions and individuals involved with maintaining the AT: “If you look at it, you think how can this possibly work? But the truth is that it does.”
The trail also continues to be a source of deep connection for many people. That includes Mogilewsky herself. A few years ago, she proposed to her husband on the AT while they were hiking a section together.
“I’m always filled with pride that the AT is really a trail of the people and for the people,” she said. “And this number sort of reinforced how many people this resource serves.”
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