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Arizona's national parks contributed $1.8 billion to local economy

Visitors view sunrise at Mather Point on the South Rim of Grand Canyon National Park.
J. Baird
/
NPS Photo
Visitors view sunrise at Mather Point on the South Rim of Grand Canyon National Park.

More than 10 million people visited Arizona’s national parks last year and a new report from the National Park Service found that all those visitors spent more than a billion dollars during their stay.

The agency says tourism supported 16,000 direct and indirect jobs in local communities with a cumulative economic impact of $1.8 billion.

Most of that spending was in and around Grand Canyon National Park, which welcomed 4.7 million people who spent an estimated $759 million in gateway communities.

Great Smoky Mountain National Park was the country’s most visited with spent $3 billion there.

Nationwide, the bulk of the spending went to lodging, restaurants and gas.