A Grand comeback

Rangers at the Grand Canyon counted a 2.9% increase in visitors last year, a bump that follows three years of decline and a rare uptick in a year that saw national park visits dip nationwide.

National Park Service officials say that park visits last year amounted to 253.6 million, a 4.3% decrease from the year before. At the Grand Canyon, the tally was 4.46 million.

The Arizona park hit a peak of 4.94 million visitors in 1999 -- the Grand Canyon’s busiest year since record-keeping began in 1915. But in the first years of this decade, numbers dropped as low as 4.34 million in 2002. Then came last year’s bump.

The park’s busiest month was July, which saw 651,141 visitors -- about 21,000 people daily. The park’s slowest month: this one. An average of 5,804 people per day visited last February.

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-- Christopher Reynolds