State park attracts 529K visitors

WATKINS GLEN—Watkins Glen State Park has seen a significant increase in the number of visitors this year, reaching a total of 529,677 visitors from Jan.1 to Sept. 18, 2013. This is a 4.8 percent increase from last year’s total number of 505,322 visitors for the same time period. This is the largest number of visitors to the park in the past six years, where the number of visitors has consistently grown every year since 2008, which had a total of 364,221 visitors.
Fred Bonn, director of the Finger Lakes State Parks Region, said the swimming pool at Watkins Glen State Park helped contribute to the rise in attendance this summer. Bonn believes special events and festivities in the village bring visitors to the park as well. The park’s proximity to the village encourages visitors who come to Watkins Glen for other activities to see the park also.
However, state parks in the Finger Lakes region as a whole have seen a decline in park attendance from last year. This number includes parks in Canandaigua, Cayuga, Chemung, Ontario, Schuyler, Steuben, Seneca, Tioga, Tompkins, Wayne and Yates. These parks saw a combined 2,591,449 visitors in 2013, which is down 5.4 percent from 2,739,424 visitors in 2012.
Bonn said the drops in regional attendance were most likely due to temporary closures of park swimming facilities.
“Swimming [during the summer months] drives park attendance,” Bonn said. “Any time we have more than seven-tenths of an inch of rain, we have to close natural swimming areas to test the water.”
Watkins Glen State Park has a man-made pool that does not need to be closed when it rains heavily.
Keuka Lake State Park also saw a decline in the number of park guests in 2013, coming in at only 74,981 guests, down 9.4 percent compared to 2012’s 82,753. The year 2012 saw the highest amount of visitors to Keuka Lake State Park in the past six years, which ranged as low as 72,900 visitors in 2008.