Report details Death Valley National Park economic benefits

A new National Park Service report shows that 1,678,000 visitors came to Death Valley National Park in 2018 and spent over $140 million in Inyo County and Southern Nevada communities.

Despite the partial government shutdown over the December holidays, those numbers are both records and up from 1,294,000 visitors spending $107 million the previous year. That spending supported over 1,700 jobs in the local area.

“Visitors come to Death Valley from around the world and most of them stop in communities around the park to purchase food, fuel and lodging. In fact, every $1 invested in the National Park Service is returned tenfold to the economy,” Superintendent Mike Reynolds said in a recent news release.

“Tourism is a key component of the Southern Nevada and Inyo County, California economies, and I’m proud Death Valley visitors, as well as staff, play a role in sustaining these communities,” he said.

The peer-reviewed visitor spending analysis was conducted by economists Catherine Cullinane Thomas and Egan Cornachione of the U.S. Geological Survey and Lynne Koontz of the National Park Service.

The report shows $20.2 billion of direct spending by more than 318 million park visitors in communities within 60 miles of a national park. This spending supported 329,000 jobs nationally; 268,000 of those jobs are found in these gateway communities. The cumulative benefit to the U.S. economy was $40.1 billion.