Officials with the National Park Service say the Great Smoky Mountains National Park set a record for visitors in May. The Park had nearly 886,000 visitors in May of 2013. It’s the largest number of visitors to the park ever for the month of May and it’s up by more than 10% from May of 2012.
In the first five months of 2013, however, visitation is down by 5.5% from the five-year average. So far this year, the park has recorded just over 2,506,000 visitors… about 273,000 fewer than the same period in 2012.