Photo by Kevin

Close to six million people visited the Lincoln Memorial in 2011, reported the National Park Service yesterday, leading all other local sites. Those visitors helped bring in $204 million to the local economy and created 2,075 jobs.

The information is included in a report by the park service assessing the impact of tourism at national parks and monuments throughout the country. All told, it says, national parks throughout the country received 278.9 million visitors in 2011, and those visitors spent close to $13 billion on everything from food, lodging and shopping in the communities around those parks and monuments. That spending helped created 251,600 jobs, says the report.

In other local sites, the Vietnam Memorial got 4 million visitors in 2011, the World War II Memorial for 3.75 million, Rock Creek Park got 2 million, the Jefferson Memorial got 1.95 million, the Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial got 1.5 million visitors, the White House got 570,000, and the Washington Monument got 430,000. All those visits contributed over $1 billion to the local economy and helped create close to 9,000 jobs.

The report is certainly well-timed: with sequestration set to hit in two days, national parks and monuments across the country are set to see cuts in funding. Under sequestration, the National Mall is slated for $1.6 million in budget cuts, second in the country only to Yellowstone National Park, which will see a $1.75 million decrease in funding.