Gateway Arch Visitors Were Undercounted for Years, National Park Service Says

For years, administrators of the Gateway Arch National Park suspected that visitors were being undercounted — and now they finally have proof.

The undercount was confirmed in a new, two-year study of the downtown St. Louis national park, which used location-based mobile device data, park leaders say.

Previously, counts were based on a visitor use study dating back to the 1990s, according to a press release issued by the park yesterday. The 30-year-old study found that for every four people who went to the visitor's center, one additional person visited the park itself.

But the mobile device data suggested that conclusion is way off for current usage patterns. In 2021 and 2022, in fact, the data instead showed that the park saw one additional person for every single person who visited the visitors' center.

That conclusion is likely to be supported anecdotally by anyone who's spent an idyllic afternoon on the park grounds — there are plenty of people who enjoy the lush acreage and its reflecting pools without bothering with the subterranean visitor's center. But if you're still not convinced, the press release notes, "The study’s methodology went through academic peer review and was approved by the NPS Social Science Program." So there.

“We have long suspected that we were undercounting visitors on the park grounds, and I am pleased that we now have a more accurate way of counting how many people are enjoying the park,” Jeremy Sweat, superintendent of Gateway Arch National Park said in the release. “Before the CityArchRiver renovations, most of the park was separated from Downtown St. Louis by the Interstate. One of the main goals of that project was to connect the park with the local community and it’s great to see so many visitors recreating and enjoying special events on the park grounds.”

The park notes that the new methodology is almost certain to provide higher visitation numbers for 2023, but we won't be able to get our hands on those until next year, and only after they've been reviewed and finalized. For now, however, preliminary visitor counts maintained by the National Park Service show 2.2 million visitors already through the end of October — a higher tally than any year-end number since 2013, and that's with two full months to go.

And hey, this new method of counting isn't the only good news the Gateway Arch has gotten lately: Turns out this downtown gem is also the safest park in the whole damn national park system. So if you haven't visited lately, there's literally no reason not to stop by — whether or not you bother to check in at the visitor's center.

Editor's note: A previous version of this story inaccurately summarized information from the study. We regret the error.



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