The 10 Best National Parks to Visit in Fall, According to Actual Visitors

Despite the darker nights and the colder temperatures, fall is one of the most beautiful times of year, and many of us—around 29 million every October, to be precise—like to make the most of the autumn colors by taking a trip to a national park. And now, a new survey by travel site Hellotickets has revealed what America’s best national parks are to visit at this time of year. 

The survey’s authors looked at official U.S. National Parks Service visitor data, covering the period 2020 to 2024, across a range of different metrics, including visitor counts, the amount of time people tended to spend in each park, and the reviews and responses left by visitors on Google (and the precise number of those that referenced the fall).

Best National Parks by Fall Score

All those facts and figures were then weighted and combined to award each national park an official “fall score” out of 100, with the higher number representing the best autumnal experience. See the list of the top 10 below, and more information on the analysis.

In first place was Tennessee’s Great Smoky Mountains National Park, with an unmatched fall score of 96.9 out of 100, putting it more than 10 points clear of the closest competition at the top of the list. 

With over 19.7 million individual visits logged over the survey’s five-year period, the Smokies were not only America’s most visited park, but also one of its highest rated, with an average score of 4.90 on Google, and over 1,800 visitor reviews specifically referring to visits made there during the fall.

But it was in the total number of hours spent inside the park that the Smoky Mountains surpassed all its competition, becoming the only park in the entire United States to log a nine-figure number of visitor hours from 2020 to 2024. In total, those 19 million visitors spent a staggering 132.5 million hours walking and hiking its trails.

Not far behind the Smokies, Maine’s Acadia National Park finished with a fall score of 84.7 out of 100 in the survey. Its 6.2 million visitors couldn’t quite compete with the Smoky Mountains’ 19 million, but they nevertheless racked up almost 39 million hours inside the park—and likewise averaged a Google rating of 4.90—to earn it second place in the survey overall. 

The remainder of the Top 5, in fact, were all within just a few points of one another. Just a single fall point behind Acadia, Utah’s Zion National Park finished with a total of 83.2 out of 100. It recorded more visitors (6.4 million) and visitor hours (40 million) than Acadia, but fell at the last hurdle with a Google average of 4.80—despite recording more online reviews relating to the fall (2,323 in total) than any other park in the entire United States.

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Fourth place, meanwhile, went to Colorado’s Rocky Mountain National Park, with a score of 82.3, and Arizona’s Grand Canyon National Park finished in fifth place with a fall score of 81.9.

The Most Popular Parks Don’t Necessarily Have the Highest Scores

Among the many famous names on the list, California’s Yosemite National Park (81.1) came in sixth place overall, followed by Wyoming’s Yellowstone (78.2) and Grand Teton (76.8) in seventh and eighth place, respectively. Joshua Tree ranked 12th place, with a score of 70.4 (finishing equal to Montana’s Glacier National Park), while Utah’s famous Arches National Park (63.4) finished in 19th place, and Death Valley came in squarely mid-table, with a score of 45.8, putting it in 44th place overall.

At the very bottom end of the table, meanwhile, it was the District of Columbia’s National Capital Parks Central that regrettably ranked in final 66th place, with a fall score of just 8.5. It was one of nine parks in the entire list that have recorded no reviews relating to autumn visits.