Visitation · National Seashore

Cape Hatteras National Seashore visitation by month and year

July is the busiest month at Cape Hatteras, when the average temperature nearby is 81 degrees. January is the quietest, and the average temperature then is 47 degrees. July runs about 6.1 times the visits of January. The crowd arrives with the warm weather and leaves with it. Annual visits rose 3.0 percent from 2,606,632 in 2019 to 2,684,009 in 2025.

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Visits by month, with temperature and precipitation

Bars are the average recreation visits in each month over 2021 to 2025. The line is the average temperature at Frisco 2Nne, 12 miles from the park's reference point, station USC00313336 in the NOAA 1991 to 2020 climate normals. The lower panel is monthly rain from the same station, which publishes no snowfall normal.

Annual visits, 1979 to 2025

Recreation visits per calendar year. A year with a missing month is left blank rather than estimated.

The last ten years

Year	Recreation visits	Change on prior year
2025	2,684,009	-2.9%
2024	2,762,954	-2.2%
2023	2,826,169	-1.3%
2022	2,862,844	-10.7%
2021	3,206,056	+21.1%
2020	2,648,522	+1.6%
2019	2,606,632	+0.6%
2018	2,591,056	+6.5%
2017	2,433,703	+0.9%
2016	2,411,711	+6.0%

Visitation at other parks

Blue Ridge Parkway Great Smoky Mountains National Park Gulf Islands National Seashore Cape Cod National Seashore

Source: NPS Visitor Use Statistics, monthly recreation visits, as compiled for Publicopia Labs. A year is shown only when all twelve months were reported. Temperature, precipitation and snowfall normals are the 1991 to 2020 monthly averages published by NOAA NCEI for station USC00313336. Data refreshed October 14, 2026.