The relationship between age and historic site visitation can be thought of as a combination of two distinct phenomena. The first of these, known as the “cohort” effect, refers to the effect of people’s generation on their tendency to visit historic sites. The other effect is that of a person’s age on his or her visitation (the “age” effect). Indicator V-13b presents the historic site visitation data in a way that makes the relative influence of these phenomena more apparent.

Data for this indicator are drawn from the following question in the Survey of Public Participation in the Arts: “Did you [in the past year] visit an historic park or monument, or tour buildings or neighborhoods for their historic or design value?” Measuring historic site visitation based on such a question is one of two possible means of gauging the extent to which Americans make use of the nation’s historical resources. Another approach is to seek visitation data not from individuals but from the sites they visit. No organization or individual researcher has yet produced a reliable estimate of total visitation for U.S. historic sites, but information on levels of visitation to National Park Service (NPS) historic sites and monuments are available for years 1975–present.

The NPS reports that visitation to its historic sites (including battlefields, memorials, and military parks) rose from approximately 89.5 million in 2002 to 105.6 million in 2012.* These counts are of visits to historic sites, not the people who visited them. Because a single person can make multiple visits to a historical destination, site visitation levels usually exceed the number of individuals who visited the site in any given year. Also, such data capture visits made by people from other nations and do not take into account the growth of the U.S. population over the 10-year period. As a result of these two sets of issues, site visitation data tell only a partial story about Americans’ embrace of their historical resources, although they do speak to the demands made of such sites’ physical infrastructure and staff.

* Calculated using the online data tools available at https://irma.nps.gov/Stats/. Included in the NPS visitation counts provided here are visits to what NPS terms “national historic sites,” “national historical parks,” “national battlefields,” “national battlefield parks,” “national military parks,” “national monuments,” and “national memorials.”

Other history-related items in the Humanities Indicators can be found under “Knowledge of U.S. History,” “Advanced Placement Exams Taken in the Humanities,” “Qualifications of Humanities Teachers in U.S. Public Middle Schools,” “Qualifications of Humanities Teachers in U.S. Public High Schools,” and “History Degree Completions.”

For additional information regarding Americans’ engagement with humanities institutions, see “Art Museum Attendance” and “Use of Public Libraries.”