Visits to regional parks and trails in metro area hit all-time high in 2022

The Metropolitan Council (Met Council) said that visits to metro area regional parks and trails hit an all-time high in 2022 with 69 million visits. 2022 park and trail visits were up 6.4% from 2021.

The most popular location was the Minneapolis Chain of Lakes which had 7.5 million visits, the council said, with the Como Park, Zoo and Conservatory coming in second with 3.8 million visits.

The 415 miles of metro area trails saw a jump of 14% in 2022 from the previous year.

The Met Council says that special events visits increased by over 675,000 in 2022 from 2021 but remained below pre-pandemic numbers in 2019.

Overall, the council says the main reasons for the upticks in visits were due to special events, increased trail visits and big increases in park visits in Ramsey and Carver County.

The Met Council says producing the estimates of visits is a collaboration with 10 partner agencies including cities, counties and special parks districts. Visitation data is collected from Memorial Day to Labor Day and used for annual estimates.

The Regional Parks System is made up of 44 parks, 12 park reserves, eight special recreation features and 415 miles of trails.