LI State Park Named Second Most Popular In New York, Per Comptroller’s Report

WANTAGH, NY — A south shore beachfront was the second-most popular state park in New York last year, per a report from the state comptroller’s office, narrowly missing the top spot won by Niagara Falls and almost doubling the third-place finisher.

Jones Beach State Park, with its six-and-a-half mile beach and 2,400-acre maritime environment, reached 7.9 million visitors last year, Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli said. It was a year where state parks across New York saw a slight downturn in attendance, with 86 million total visitors in 2025 after 88.4 million were recorded in 2024; the comptroller’s office attributes that dip in part to a rainy spring followed by a hot, dry summer and a decrease in tourism, specifically from Canada. The numbers still represent a decent 10-year increase for the state’s public parks, which only saw 69.4 million visitors in 2016.

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Topping the list of the most attended parks was Niagara Falls, the oldest state park in the country, with 8.9 million visitors to Jones Beach’s 7.9 million. Jones Beach has still seen a 34 percent increase over the past 10 years, the comptroller’s office said, with annual visitor numbers ticking up by more than 2 million per-year since 2016.

In the report, the comptroller’s office said more people are recreating outdoors but that the increased number of participants is doing it less frequently. Even with that drop in frequency, the outdoor recreation industry in New York accounts for a reported 1.6 percent of the state’s GDP and more than 264,000 jobs, state officials said.

As for Jones Beach, the summer ahead is already packed with events that could bring visitors to the beach, the boardwalk or the concert hall. There will be celebrations of America’s 250th anniversary starting Memorial Day weekend, the annual Jones Beach Air Show featuring the Blue Angels, and a concert slate that’s already packed with legends like Salt N Pepa, Pitbull and Lil Wayne.