Great Parks of Hamilton County says attendance was impressive in 2025 — nearing the record levels seen during the COVID-19 pandemic.
"During COVID, we saw a lot of folks coming out to their parks — whether it was the park in their neighborhood, or a Great Park — lots of people were coming out, and we saw record visitation like we've never seen before," says Rachel Messerschmitt, chief of guest experiences. "We are pushing those 2020 numbers. We're getting really close."
Great Parks counted nearly 6.8 million visitors from January to November 2025, Messerschmitt reports. (Complete December numbers were not available at the time of this report.) By comparison, Great Parks logged 7,295,694 visitors in 2020.
The park district uses loop counters to count vehicle traffic and traffic studies to calculate visitation numbers. That data is then analyzed by researchers at Northern Kentucky University. The district is in the process of modernizing its counters and expects to have more accurate data moving forward.
Great Parks also is adding counters to its trails.
"We did not have 100% [of] trail counters on our trails," Messerschmitt explains. "We're continuing to build that program so that we can have accurate numbers [to] show the community how much they're utilizing our parks, and make sure that we continue to get support to continue building trails because folks are using those trail systems and folks are coming to the parks."
For the first 11 months of 2025, Great Parks logged nearly 1.2 million trail users. In 2020, that number was 1,559,280
Most popular parks and trails
Winton Woods remains the most popular park based on visitation, followed by Sharon Woods and Miami Whitewater Forest. However, Sharon Woods appears to be making a move to overtake Winton Woods for the top spot.
"With all of the really exciting stuff we have going on at Sharon Woods in the next couple of years, I wouldn't be surprised if the numbers started getting closer, or even if Sharon Woods took the lead over Winton Woods," says Messerschmitt. "We opened the new playground recently at Sharon Woods. The lake dredge project is coming to an end. We're doing improvements on the trail that goes around that lake, and then we're working on the design for the new harbor that's going to go into construction here in the next couple of years."
As for trails, the paved, shared-use trail at Winton Woods was the most popular in 2025. The second most-used trail was more of a surprise to park officials — Avoca Trailhead along the Little Miami Scenic Trail. Great Parks updated the trail this year and added a more modern trail counter.
"We know that it's busy — it's a big regional trail system — but the counter we had on there in previous years, we don't feel like we were getting accurate counts, which is why we're shifting to a new counter system, and the growth in that number has been impressive," she says.
The numbers were so startling, Messerschmitt says Great Parks conducted random validations to make sure the counter was working correctly.
"That's really exciting because we're doing a lot of really great things with our regional trail system, so to see users utilizing that at the rate they are is fantastic."
Perhaps surprising to some, Messerschmitt says, the third most-used trail in 2025 was the shared-use trail at Fernbank Park along the Ohio River in Saylor Park. Fernbank Park, and the shared-use trail there, are jointly managed through a partnership between Great Parks and Cincinnati Parks.
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