Modeling Visitation at Coltsville National Historical Park

Coltsville National Historical Park (NHP), located in the City of Hartford, will be one of the first of its kind, combining an already present city park with a new federal historical interpretive center. Before it can become a full National Historical Park, both the City of Hartford and the National Park Service need a clearer understanding of how often the park will be visited and how people will use the new park. To make these projections, I have undertaken several tasks. I combined a model designed to estimate park visitation with progressive modeling of similar National Historical Parks and data of set park usage. Doing so allowed me to estimate visitation for the future Coltsville NHP based on a number of different scenarios. With no real renovations to the city park and a small visitor center, visitation is predicted to be 439,483. With thorough renovations and the visitor center, annual visitation would be predicted at roughly 541,316 persons. With this information, along with suggested methods for increasing confidence, not only will Coltsville will be one step closer to becoming an official National Historical Park, but other new sites will be able to employ a simple method of estimating park usage