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Travel & Experiences

Yosemite rises, Joshua Tree falls in mixed year for national park attendance

2013 visitors: 3,687,117. That's up about 14,000 from 2012, down from 2011's 3.95 million. The park's busiest year in the last 35 was 1996, when rangers counted 4,046,207 visitors. Here, making his first visit to the park, Kinihiko Kosuge from Georgia jumps for a photo with Yosemite Valley behind. Photo taken in May 2013.

2013 visitors: 3,687,117. That’s up about 14,000 from 2012, down from 2011’s 3.95 million. The park’s busiest year in the last 35 was 1996, when rangers counted 4,046,207 visitors. Here, making his first visit to the park, Kinihiko Kosuge from Georgia jumps for a photo with Yosemite Valley behind. Photo taken in May 2013.   (Mark Boster / Los Angeles Times)

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The 2013 attendance figures are in for most of California’s national parks and the results are a mixed bag. Despite the federal government shutdown that closed parks for two weeks in October, crowds were up in Yosemite, Lassen Volcanic and Redwood. They were down in the Channel Islands, Joshua Tree, Kings Canyon and Sequoia.Here, in order of attendance, are figures and pictures from seven of the state’s most popular national parks. Numbers are drawn from a National Park Service tally of recreational visitors.(As of Jan. 28, year-end figures were not yet posted for Death Valley and Pinnacles national parks.)

Joshua Tree National Park

2013 visitors: 1,383,340. That’s down about 13,000 from 2012. It’s also the park’s slowest year since 2009, when the attendance figure was 1,304,471. The park’s biggest year in the last three decades was 2010, when 1,434,976 visitors were counted.   (Christopher Reynolds / Los Angeles Times)

Sequoia National Park

2013 visitors: 909,274. That’s down from 1,106,584 in 2012 and marks the park’s lowest annual attendance since 2001. In this 2005 photo, a day hiker rests overlooking Little Blue Dome, right, and the Great Western Divide, along the trail to the park’s Bearpaw Meadow High Sierra Camp.  (Brian Vander Brug / Los Angeles Times)

Kings Canyon National Park

2013 visitors: 567,544. That’s down 34,000 from 2012 and up from 2011. In this 2004 photo, Eric Winter of San Jose fishes for Rainbow trout below Isosceles Peak at Dusey Basin in the park.   (Ken Hively / Los Angeles Times)

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In this 2011 photo, Nita Vail walks along a bluff on Santa Rosa Island, part of the Channel Islands

2013 visitors: 211,986. That’s the park’s lowest yearly total since 1994. In this 2011 photo, Nita Vail walks along a bluff on Santa Rosa Island, part of the Channel Islands chain.  (Al Seib / Los Angeles Times)

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