Illinois state parks draw highest number of visitors in more than a decade
Illinois' 290 state parks and 56 historic sites recorded more than 41 million visitors last year, which was the most in 15 years, following several significant capital projects to upgrade and improve many of the parks.
Interest in state parks has been growing since the pandemic, IDNR Director Natalie Phelps Finnie said in an interview.
'During COVID, people were stir crazy, shut in, and they once again realized how important nature is to all of us,' Phelps Finnie said.
An aggressive advertising campaign by the state has also helped, she said. The Illinois Department of Commerce and Economic Opportunity launched the state's 'Middle of Everything' marketing campaign in 2022, which promotes tourism at the state's top recreation and cultural attractions in TV commercials, billboards and online advertising.
Starved Rock State Park in LaSalle County topped the list in 2024 with 2.4 million visitors coming to explore the canyons and waterfalls nestled in gorges along the Illinois River in north-central Illinois.
The second-most visited park last year was Illinois Beach State Park, near Zion, with 2 million visitors. IDNR completed a major $73 million project last year to preserve the park from erosion.
'It's always been a high number of visitors, but certainly the uptick we've seen since the beach was restored and since the resort is being invested in once again and remodeled,' Phelps Finnie said.
ROCKS
Beach State Park holds Illinois' only undeveloped stretch of Lake Michigan shoreline, but it's subject to the ferocious waves of the lake. The conditions have sometimes eroded up to 100 feet of shoreline a year in parts of the park.
To preserve the park's shoreline, IDNR's project included building 22 breakwater structures in the lake to decrease the power of the waves hitting the shore. Several of the structures are entirely submerged while others that poke out the surface of the lake are designed to provide nesting for migratory birds.
The project also included extending the public beach further into Lake Michigan. Erosion had diminished the beach to come within feet of the parking lot and hotel at the park.
The state also announced earlier this year it will put $60 million toward deferred maintenance projects. More than half of that will go to Starved Rock for trail improvements, facility renovations and building a new wastewater system.
The department is also working on adding electric vehicle chargers at state parks and renovating the Old State Capitol in Springfield.
This summer, IDNR plans to restore and upgrade the Crenshaw House in Gallatin County to include a visitor center at a location on the reverse underground railroad, where slaves were held. According to IDNR, John Crenshaw used slaves at his southern Illinois home where he manufactured salt. Crenshaw is also believed to have kidnapped freed or escaped slaves to sell them back to slavery in the South.
'We're excited that the investment is being made and these parks are getting the attention they deserve,' Phelps Finnie said.
Lincoln's New Salem Historic Site in Peterburg, where the 16th president lived in his 20s, was the state's most visited historic site last year with 360,000 visitors. The site is in line for funding to repair aging buildings.
IDNR announced in March it will invest $8 million to repair up to 23 replica log buildings at the site that depict how the village looked when Lincoln lived there in the 1830s.
'You have things fall into disrepair and then it dominoes,' Phelps Finnie said. 'It builds. So what was once maybe $100 million or so is now a little over $1 billion worth of deferred maintenance' across IDNR's properties.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Los Angeles Times
2 days ago
- Los Angeles Times
Leaving Las Vegas! Fewer Californians are visiting Sin City. Here's what the number say
If you spend any time on social media, it's hard to avoid the scorching hot takes about Las Vegas' recent financial struggles. Vegas critics say the exorbitant resort fees are brutal, the ever-increasing parking costs are punishing, the comps are few and far between — and did you notice the buffets are vanishing? In short, Vegas is on a losing streak. After fighting to bounce back from COVID-19 closures, Sin City is facing financial headwinds as fewer people, particularly Californians, are visiting, playing and ultimately spending money. My colleague Terry Castleman dived into some theories, but also, as Terry does well, dug into the numbers to tell the tale of Vegas' sudden crap out. Visits to Las Vegas were down 11.3% in June 2025 versus a year earlier, according to data from the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority. Traffic on Interstate 15 at the California-Nevada border was down 4.3% over the same period, suggesting fewer visitors doing road trips from the Golden State to Vegas casinos. The number of air travelers into Las Vegas overall declined 6.3% over the previous June. In 2024, Californians made up more than a fifth of air travelers into Vegas, with nearly half of those coming from the Los Angeles metro area. A demographic report from the visitors authority estimated that Southern California provided 30% of all visitors to the city in 2024. Add it all up, and Californians could be responsible for a significant portion of the decline in Vegas tourism. Tourism within the U.S. is only part of the picture, though, as experts previously predicted we are also seeing a slump in international tourism to the U.S. The convention and visitors authority estimates that 12% of the city's visitors are international. A report from the World Travel and Tourism Council projected that the U.S. would lose $12.5 billion in international travel spending in 2025. 'While other nations are rolling out the welcome mat, the U.S. government is putting up the 'closed' sign,' Julia Simpson, the council's president, said in a statement. The report cited air-travel booking data from March that showed a 15% to 20% drop in expected travel from major tourism sources, including the United Kingdom, Germany and Canada. Visitors from Canada and Mexico made up more than half of international visitors to Las Vegas in 2024, according to data from the visitors authority. But President Trump's talk of making Canada the 51st state and his decision to hit Canada with tariffs have not endeared him to Canadian travelers. Meanwhile, media overseas have been bombarded with stories of capricious denials and detentions of travelers at U.S. border crossings. Apparently, Mexican and Canadian tourists are not feeling so welcome in the U.S. these days. 'Las Vegas thrives on tourism,' Rep. Steven Horsford wrote last week on X, 'but under the Trump slump, the numbers are tanking.' Horsford, a Democrat, represents Nevada's 4th Congressional District, which includes a portion of Las Vegas. By many metrics — including visitor totals, convention attendance and room occupancy rates — Las Vegas has not fully recovered from the onset of the pandemic. In dollar terms, however, Sin City continues to profit even as visitor numbers drop: Clark County, which includes Vegas, collected $1.16 billion in gambling revenue in June 2025, up 3.5% from a year earlier. So, Vegas' luck has not run out yet. For more, check out the full article here. Jim Rainey, staff writerDiamy Wang, homepage internIzzy Nunes, audience internKevinisha Walker, multiplatform editorAndrew J. Campa, reporterKarim Doumar, head of newsletters How can we make this newsletter more useful? Send comments to essentialcalifornia@ Check our top stories, topics and the latest articles on
NBC News
4 days ago
- NBC News
American adds Budapest, Prague and Buenos Aires flights for summer 2026
American Airlines is reviving some of its pre-pandemic destinations like Prague and Budapest, Hungary, as international travel continues to hold up better than domestic demand. Other additions include its first-ever Dallas Fort Worth International flights to Athens, Greece, and year-round nonstop service between Miami and Milan. American is also extending service for next year's World Cup, from Buenos Aires, Argentina, to Dallas and between Dallas and Zurich, where soccer's governing body, FIFA, is based,. Those flights will run from May 21 to Aug. 4 of next year, a bid for more business travel and sports tourism. Brian Znotins, American's senior vice president of network and schedule planning, told CNBC that the airline saw high numbers of customers from Argentina travel to Doha, Qatar, during the 2022 World Cup and that he expects even more to travel to the 2026 World Cup, which will be played in Canada, the U.S. and Mexico. He also said the airline is expanding its Europe service in a bet that customers would rather connect in a U.S. hub like Dallas or Charlotte, North Carolina. 'We took a fresh look at where the demand hotspots are in Europe and we continue to see strength in Italy and Greece,' Znotins said. 'We continue to see high numbers of travelers connecting in Europe to get to places like Rome and Athens,' so the airline is adding more options from U.S. hubs. With Prague and Budapest service from American's hub at Philadelphia International Airport, he said many customers already fly into one city and out of the other for Danube River cruises and other tours. American's unit revenue for domestic flights in the last quarter fell 6.4% from 2024, while trans-Atlantic revenue rose 5%. Many of American's summer routes were discontinued because of the Covid-19 pandemic, but Znotins said the changes weren't just a return to that period. 'We've redesigned the entire airline based on today's demand environment and not some desire to get back to 2019,' he said. 'Everything has changed.' American will use Boeing 787-8 Dreamliners for all the new flights except for Zurich to Dallas, which will be flown by Boeing 777-200s.
4 days ago
One woman set out to visit every museum in New York City. Here's what she's learned so far
Museums throughout New York City were just reopening in the wake of the COVID pandemic when Jane August launched what seemed like a straightforward plan: She would travel to every single museum in the city, producing a short video log of each one. She figured it would take three years at most. But with 136 museums documented since 2021, she still has about 64 to go by her estimation. And with new museums opening and some old ones changing so dramatically that they deserve a revisit, the 26-year-old now says she's realistically aiming to complete the project before she's 30. 'At first, I started the project for myself to safely get out of my house and experience culture in the city again,' said August, who grew up in Arizona and has lived in New York for nine years. She said she wasn't a big museum person before starting the project, and had only been to around seven at the time. But as she began, the plan quickly evolved. 'I decided TikTok would be a cool way to document this so my friends could keep up with my journey and maybe discover something new,' August said. Her audience has since far expanded with about 40,000 followers across social platforms. Visiting its museums has sparked a new appreciation for New York City, she said, as well as for the sheer breadth of what's on offer, particularly for those willing to explore smaller museums and those in the boroughs beyond Manhattan. And yes, she has favorites. 'I love Poster House. It's the first poster museum in the country, has great programming and is free on Fridays,' she says of the largely unsung museum at 23rd Street and Sixth Avenue, which features graphic design and advertising posters ranging from Art Nouveau to political propaganda. Others on her list of favorites include the Tenement Museum in lower Manhattan and the Museum of the Moving Image in Queens, as well as three Brooklyn museums: the Brooklyn Seltzer Museum, the New York Sign Museum and the Red Hook Pinball Museum. She also has a soft spot for The Paley Center for Media NYC in midtown Manhattan. 'They have archives with every TV show you could possibly think of. It's amazing,' she said of The Paley Center. As for the city's smallest borough, the ferry ride to Staten Island (free, with views of the Statue of Liberty along the way) is well worth the trip for museum-goers, she said. The borough features the Newhouse Center of Contemporary Art, as well as the Alice Austen House, a Victorian Gothic house important to LGBTQ+ history. It was the home of one of the country's earliest and most prolific female photographers, famous for documenting the city's immigrant communities. 'You wouldn't imagine that Staten Island had one of the gayest museums in New York, dedicated to a queer photographer, but it does,' August said. Staten Island is also home to the Jacques Marchais Museum of Tibetan Art and the Chinese Scholar's Garden, which claims to be one of only two authentic classical outdoor Chinese gardens in the United States. 'It's so peaceful and quiet, and I love riding the ferry,' August said. While museums can be expensive, she said she makes good use of museum passes at her local library, and that many museums have days or times when they are free. And because her 'day jobs' tend to be at night — she works at different venues in ticketing and production, and also bartends — she's able to visit museums in the middle of weekdays, when they tend to be less crowded. August recently became a licensed New York City tour guide, and she says it's given her a renewed appreciation both of the city and its visitors. She's also seen a few trends take hold, like the rise in museum programming aimed at younger audiences and the trend away from chronological exhibits, which she says make return visits less enticing. 'So many of us are desperate for third spaces,' she said, referring to a place distinct from both home and work where people can relax or socialize. 'For a lot of us, we have a hunger to come back and visit again, especially when it's free.' Although big museums like the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Museum of Modern Art can certainly be crowded, August says New York isn't facing nearly the level of overcrowding as in European cities like Paris. And at peak times and seasons, like summer, it's nice to know there are plenty of smaller museums to visit. 'I think this is especially important for the lesser-known museums that don't often get press or social media features,' she said. 'There are some small museums that get a huge bump in attendance and press after I have posted my videos so it's exciting to be able to play a small role in that success.' As for her motivation to continue the project, she said 'it boils down to the people. I get to connect with fascinating and passionate people who are making these museums what they are and I get to connect with enthusiasts who want to find something fun to do with their weekend." For anyone interested in giving something like this a go for themselves, she says it takes a lot of endurance. 'Be prepared to go to corners of the city you never considered — I'm talking edges of the Bronx and middle of Staten Island," she said. "But if you're up for the challenge, you'll probably gain a lot of insight on not just the museums and their content, but also the communities they serve.'
