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Bonus: January 2025 Yellowstone National Park Visitation Statistics Special · This Week in Yellowstone National Park

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  From inside my warm home in Livingston, Montana, where it's currently negative two degrees outside
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  and we have two feet of snow on the ground, this is a b-b-b-bonus episode of This Week in Yellowstone.
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  What's the topic? January visitation for Yellowstone National Park.
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  There is nothing funnier, well that's not true, there are lots of things funnier, but the abruptness
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  at which this theme song ends, but when I start talking again it makes me laugh and I hope it
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  makes you laugh too because it's always a little jarring and a little bit like whoa what's going on,
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  but yeah, welcome to another episode, like I said off the bat, this is a bonus episode
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  and this week I am talking about the January visitation 2025 for Yellowstone National Park.
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  The numbers were recently released, I'm recording this on February 18th, 2025 and like I said this
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  episode I'm going to dive into the visitation for Yellowstone, give you some interesting facts and
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  figures and also let you know kind of what this means for the rest of the year potentially.
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  I'm going to be doing this every month so obviously I'm saying obviously a lot, sorry about that.
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  January is a tough one to gauge how the rest of the year is going, how the first month of the year
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  kicks off is always just kind of a crap shoot for how the year will go, whether it's impacting travel,
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  any number of issues, you know we've had some years where January sees record visitation and then
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  the rest of the year doesn't quite have that same zeal. So again, not sure what the takeaway will be
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  from this one but there's some interesting stats that I think you'll enjoy so stay tuned. And if
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  numbers do not interest you, you don't have to listen to this podcast episode, I'm not going to feel
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  bad. In a couple days I'll be releasing the next this week in Yellowstone that we'll talk about
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  everything you know and love. This is just like I said every week this is a passion project and I
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  enjoy talking about park visitation. So let's get into January's numbers. January of 2025 saw 40,363
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  recreation visitors. That number if I'm clicking through my tabs is the eighth most popular January
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  on record. You may think oh the last eight years were also or last seven years were also very good
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  with the 40,363 the years that have had more popular that were more popular had more visitation
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  were 2024, 2023, 2022 and then we go all the way down to 2002, 2001, 1995 and 1994 as years that
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  had more January visitation than 2025. Obviously the last few years are just like oh yeah that
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  makes sense you know there's a ebb and a flow to it 2022 saw 46,000 visitors 2023 saw 45,000 2024
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  saw 42,000 but the numbers that stood out to me when I was putting this together were 1994 and
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  1995. 95 makes sense because there was some hype for the wolves coming in the wolves were released
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  in January of 1995 and so you know there's some excitement there but 1994 couldn't tell you why
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  that number is at 40,000 nearly 41,000 visitors that is way higher than it should be to put that
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  in perspective 1991 had 28,000 1997 had 31,000 I mean obviously some of that's probably the
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  weather conditions things like that but still when we're looking at park visitation it's really
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  interesting to look way back and to look at every sort of trend and to know that you know
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  there were years in the 90s and even in the 80s where park visitation was pretty high compared
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  to the US population you know 2001 and 2002 we had a high visitation again can't really tell you why
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  why because in 2002 we had 40,465 visitors but by 2004 there are just 22,817 now again I do know
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  that there is a slight skew to these numbers because you used to be able to also take your own
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  snowmobiles into the park so more people would go into the interior however that's a big jump
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  anyway because I don't know it's it's not it's not kind of a normal number to see
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  you know the same amount of people entering the park now as in the 90s when you think about the
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  prevalent kind of conversation about how parks are being overloved and loved to death where
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  um January of 94 95 saw more people than January of 2025 so do with that information what you will
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  I found it kind of interesting when I was looking at everything and wanted to share it with you all
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  so let's look at this January and how it compared to last year last year saw 42,740 visitors
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  that we had a decrease this year of 5.56 percent there were a few more non recreation visitors
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  this year which is employees things like that but that makes sense that that doesn't really
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  factor in too much of anything visitor hours how the park collects those couldn't tell you probably
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  should dive into that but park visitor hours for recreation visitors 715,313 couldn't tell you what
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  that means um just one of those numbers so where are people going into the park the answer is pretty
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  simple the overwhelming majority of visitors to the park entered through the north gate and then
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  the west gate the north gate up in Gardner 25,088 so 25088 the west gate 11,926 the south gate had
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  3049 visitors the northeast gate doesn't technically count uh they do not have the counter going
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  right now because if you drive into the park through the west gate and go to cook city and
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  then drive back you're considered one visitor but the east gate had 300 visitors so not a lot of
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  people coming in the park from Cody which makes sense that's just a long snow it's not a snowshoe
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  long snowmobile trip and there's not really the infrastructure out there that there is say
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  out of west Yellowstone or even at the south gate i think the shocking number here really is that
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  south gate with over 3000 visitors i think we overlook the south gate and we talk about winter
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  recreation quite a bit but 3000 people is a decent amount i mean that's it's a hundred a day so not
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  too bad all right so how many people stayed in the park another fun little thing to put together
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  concessioner lodging so lodging at Old Faithful or in mammoth they had 9,578 the total was 9,623
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  for overnight stays which means that 45 people in january stayed at the mammoth campground
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  the national park service does a fun thing of keeping track of tents versus RVs and 18 visitors
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  camped in tents in january of 2025 while 27 stayed in RVs you know again i don't know what you're
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  supposed to do with that information but if you are one of those 18 people that tent camped
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  like congratulations i am all four people doing that when they have the right gear it's nothing i
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  would probably personally do but you know it's it's still a fun thing to do uh if you're if you're
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  into being cold i think the RVs make a little more sense but still that that number is pretty low
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  for campers it's only 45 if we want to compare it to last year to 2024 we can't the mammoth campground
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  was not open last year and i could dive in and figure out like previous years but i'm not i'm
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  not going to no one really cares that much if you do reach out to me i can give you those numbers
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  like i said the total number of overrides overnight stays 9,623 in the park so those are the lucky few
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  there were obviously far more people staying in west yellowstone out in cook city and silver gate
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  and up in gardener and even all the way through paradise valley and living stand that would go
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  into the park but those that stayed in the park just under 10 000 which is a decent amount so when
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  we break this down a little further this year the old faithful snow lodge so far in january 5,642
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  visitors while the mammoth hotel had 3,936 visitors the old faithful snow lodge actually saw an
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  increase of 17.4 percent from the previous year while old faithful saw 13.3 percent increase total
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  lodge stays averaged out to a 15.7 percent increase in visitors from the previous year but again
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  what's interesting is that visitation this year was less than last year but we're seeing more
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  people staying in the park now there was one thing that i wanted to mention about camping that i
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  forgot to earlier but according to the park there were zero backcountry campers in january this year
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  the only reason i bring that up is because supposedly there were 53 backcountry campers last
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  year so we saw a hundred percent decrease but that 53 number and that zero number 53 is correct for
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  last january the zero may just be taking longer to get registered through the park website which
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  is where i'm getting all of this information so while i'm almost done with the january visitation
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  records because it is the first month and there's not a lot to talk about i do want to point out one
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  trend that i am seeing over the last few years that is important to note and that is the traffic
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  count on highway 191 now if you're familiar with highway 191 it is that road that connects west
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  yellowstone to big sky and then up to bozeman this year supposedly there were around 51,600
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  people that drove through that is pretty high historically because the highest number was 2022
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  with 54,870 visitors in january since 191 is just a major road that goes through the park that is an
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  actually an entrance station we tend not to count these as visitation however we can look at this
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  section of the road and kind of see is the area itself getting more popular and more visited
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  so more people might be going instead of going to west yellowstone they might be going to big
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  sky from island park or from Idaho or driving down to the t-tons or island park or elsewhere in Idaho
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  from bozeman from belgrade from four corners and through the gallatin gateway so looking at that
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  that's just an interesting thing that i'm noticing this was the doing some quick math right now it
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  looks like about the fourth or fifth busiest january on highway 191 and remember how i mentioned
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  like oh there are some years 2001 and 2002 and then 95 and 96 that were pretty high those numbers for
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  highway 191 for those years are actually much lower and more consistent so this was a very
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  trafficked january for highway 191 so finally what does this mean for the year uh it's too early to
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  tell i think we're going to have a busy year i don't think that is a rough prediction or a difficult
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  prediction i think yellowstone's going to see top five years that's an easy prediction we might see
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  top one or two years of visitation this year january is just off to a slower than last year
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  start but not by enough to really say that oh yeah people aren't coming february's numbers
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  may be low too just because we have had some snow and while the snow hasn't necessarily
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  hit the park as hard as it's hit the surrounding areas it has hit the surrounding areas pretty hard
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  interstate 90 that connects bozeman to livingston and then from livingston you swing south on highway
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  89 to get to gardener in that north entrance the pass has been closed for hours at a time
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  days at a time and it's been pretty snowy so that's going to impact travel we will see what that does
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  when the february numbers are released in early to mid march but until then i can say that park
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  visitation is still consistent we are off to a busy start but not the busiest start and it's been a
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  snowy or winter so if it wasn't a snowy maybe we would have seen higher numbers but with that
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  i thank you for listening to this bonus episode of this week in yellowstone and i will be back in
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  a couple of days with the newest episode covering what you need to know to visit the park this coming
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  week until then take it easy enjoy winter and know that as i'm recording this we are about one month
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  away from rocky mountain bluebirds returning to yellowstone national park i'm going to talk about
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  that more in a couple of weeks but if you listen to this whole bonus episode you get that little
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  tidbit of information i usually see rocky mountain bluebirds around mid march so fingers crossed we
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  see them soon till then bye this week in yellowstone is brought to you by the outdoor society because
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  that's my company and that's where this is hosted there are no sponsors there's no ad breaks
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  this is a labor of love so thank you all for listening copyright 2025 baby