According to a report by Bob Miller, Management Assistant at the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, the attendance were up over 3% over last year.
September Park visits were up by 3.2% over 2008 (845,655 people this September vs 819,816 in 2008).
"That's a shift in the right direction, but we need to bear in mind that our visitation for September 2008 was off by 13.8% from 2007," Miller said in the release.
Gatlinburg Entrance was up 8.3% – Townsend was + 13.8% – Cherokee was unchanged.
Year-to-date visits are up by 5.7% over 2008 with 7.2 million this year and 6.8 last year.
Camping in the front-country fee campgrounds was also up by 16.6% for September – which is huge considering that September was a monsoon season this year.

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