Q&A of the Day – How Many People Visit Florida’s State Parks

By Brian Mudd

Q&A of the Day – How Many People Visit Florida’s State Parks 

Each day I feature a listener question sent by one of these methods.      

Email: brianmudd@iheartmedia.com     

Social: @brianmuddradio    

iHeartRadio: Use the Talkback feature – the microphone button on our station’s page in the iHeart app.       

Today’s Entry: Brian, thanks for all of the work you do on our behalf. I have a question for you. How many people visit Florida’s parks? There hasn’t been a balanced discussion of the state’s development proposals at the nine state parks. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t think we need to be developing our parks either, but I would like to hear more about how many people are using these parks given that the state’s position was to increase use of them with development.  

Bottom Line: You’ve got it. As always there are two sides to stories and one side to the facts and I’m always happy to dive into the facts. Governor DeSantis stated yesterday that the proposals were “half-baked” and on hold for now, though as of now, of the nine state parks tagged for potential development by the Florida Department of Environmental Protection’s Great Outdoors Initiative, the only development plan that’s been dropped is the plan for Johnathan Dickinson Park. I’ll breakdown visitation levels and the current economic impact of Florida’s state parks from the top.  

Florida has 175 state parks and visitation has topped 30 million people in certain years. That’s especially impressive considering Florida’s population is 22 million people. Clearly many residents and tourists visit Florida’s state parks regularly. The Florida State Parks Foundation keeps updated information on Florida’s state parks and they’ve identified that in 2023 approximately 28 million people visited Florida’s state parks, or an average of about 160,000 visitors per park, per year: 

  • $3.6 billion in economic impact resulted from visitors to Florida’s state parks 
  • $241 million in revenue was generated by the state from sales taxes at the parks 
  • 50,000 jobs were supported by the park.  

Now let’s look at the nine parks tagged for development by the state. Those parks are/were (with 2023 visitation numbers): 

What stands out in this analysis, given that the reason stated for these parks being chosen for development was to improve use, is that only one of the parks, Camp Helen, has below average attendance. What’s more is that two of the top trafficked state parks, Anastasia and Honeymoon Island, made the list. Is it possible that the introduction of golf courses and pickleball courts, etc. might increase attendance at these parks to even higher levels? Sure, it’s possible. Is it also possible that these parks which already pull in well above average traffic might become less desirable for those who visit parks to enjoy nature? Certainly, that’s possible as well.  

There’s not a common theme that runs between the selected parks which speaks to the need for greater transparency into the rationale behind these proposals, and also the motivation behind the selection of these parks. For those who were already skeptical of the selection of these parks for development, a closer review into these parks seemingly justifies it.  

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