Sleeping Bear Dunes tops 1.7 million visitors for first time

From staff reports

The final numbers are in. The number of people who visited Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore in 2020 was 1,718,696. This is the first time that visitation has topped 1.7 million.

Sleeping Bear visitation topped the previous record (1,683,553 in 2016) already in November. So the 20,756 who visited the National Lakeshore in December were just icing on the cake.

National parks, and outdoor spaces, in general, have been a crucial outlet for Americans during the pandemic of 2020.

National parks may be more important this year than ever before, said Rob Wallace, assistant secretary for Fish, Wildlife and Parks at the Department of the Interior, during a visit to Sleeping Bear on Sept. 15. Wallace was in town to learn how the Great American Outdoors Act, signed into law on August 4, could expand recreational opportunities and address long overdue infrastructure and modernization challenges for this and other parks.