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The 2024 Visitation Statistics Special · This Week in Yellowstone National Park

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  Coming at you from just outside of Yellowstone National Park, this is a special edition of
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  This Week in Yellowstone. This episode, we take a deep dive into the visitation statistics
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  of 2024 in Yellowstone National Park. It's an abrupt ending like we do every week here on This Week in Yellowstone.
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  This is a special episode, it's not necessarily going to be everyone's cup of tea, it might be, I
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  don't know, I shouldn't downplay this because I find it fascinating, so someone else might.
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  But this week, the official title I have is This Week in Yellowstone, a closer look at 2024 visitation.
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  Now, what that means is, as of today, Wednesday, January 15th, Yellowstone National Park just
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  updated the visitation statistics, which means that I got to do a very nerdy deep dive this morning
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  into some of those same visitation statistics for last year. So, 2024 is over, and that means that,
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  like I said, it's time for visitation statistics for the previous year. Yay! The major news is that
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  the park experienced its second biggest visitation year in history with 4,744,352 visitors. This is
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  a 5.4% increase in visitation from 2023, and for those curious, 2021 was the biggest year in park
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  history with 4,860,242 visitors. Now, I covered that little snippet right there in This Week in
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  Yellowstone. If you haven't listened to that, that is my main podcast that is on this feed, so if
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  you're only listening to this one, weird. But, you know, I get it. Sometimes I listen to one episode
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  of a podcast. But like I said, every week I tell you what's going on, and then sometimes I will do
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  something special like this of things that fascinate me or something that someone has asked me to do.
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  No one, no one, no one has asked me to do this, and maybe they will. Maybe you'll ask me to stop.
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  I don't know, but we are going to find out. So, I'm going to kind of have a little rant at the
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  beginning. Bear with me because there are some important things that I am mentioning. But really,
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  when we talk about visitation in national parks, nearly every time people say the numbers, there
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  is always then a narrative of, well, that's too many people, it's overcrowded, and we're loving our
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  parks to death. So, this is what I wrote about that. While some use the beaten and overused narrative
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  that we are loving our parks to death, it's really just become a fun thing that people say. I don't
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  know if fun's the right word, but you get it. Most of the time, these are never proven with
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  actual science or statistics. They're, as I said, a fun clickbait narrative highlighting bad behavior
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  in long lines in park, long lines in the parks. But what's the truth here? So, for fun, I took
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  a look at Yellowstone National Park visitation each year and compared it to the US population in
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  each of the corresponding years. In the last 14 years, there's been an increase of just two
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  thousandths of a percentage point. In the past, I've looked at all NPS visitation and compared it
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  to the US population, and guess what? There's basically a one-to-one correlation between the
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  population increase in America and the increase in park visitation. Now, if my math's correct,
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  that means that the popularity of the parks actually isn't growing. The growth is instead
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  tied directly to our country getting more people. I'm going to revisit these numbers over and over
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  again because it's a long-standing theory that I've been working on. I will do it again and update you
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  when the entire National Park Service releases their visitation numbers, and I'll let you know what
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  I find. Now, I mentioned poor behavior a second ago, and if you go online, you'll see numerous
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  instances of poor behavior at Yellowstone National Park. I do not deny that these things are happening.
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  Bad behavior exists, has always existed, and will always exist in Yellowstone. We are never going
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  to stop it. My main source of ire from the bad behavior talk is that it's not as bad as social
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  media actually shows. Everybody says it's never been worse, where that's not really true. People
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  fed bears in the 60s and early 70s from their cars. People walked through thermal areas from day one
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  of the park. People also used to hunt animals in the park, despite it being illegal. That, I think,
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  is worse behavior than a few things here and there. One of the main reasons I feel that there is an
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  increase in rural breaking behavior for many people is that more incidents are just being filmed and
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  reported. If you were in the park in the 80s and 90s, people were still approaching wildlife, but it
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  wasn't filmed by seven different people with multiple angles. So bad behavior is existing, it is
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  happening in the park, but here's some fun about that. And I'm using fun kind of sarcastically,
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  so sorry about that if you didn't pick up on that yet. Yes, there are badly behaved people still.
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  However, we had 4,744,352 visitors to the park this year. Let's pretend that 1%
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  of visitors got off the boardwalks, petted animals, and generally were breaking rules left and right.
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  That would mean that 47,443 people were doing this. That's not even close to the number of occurrences.
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  It's far too high. Even one half of 1% is still 23,721 people pettin' animals, jumping off the
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  boardwalks, and breaking other park regulations and rules. Again, that's too high of an estimate.
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  One tenth of 1% is 474 visitors, which is more than one person a day going off the
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  boardwalks and approaching wildlife in a truly unsafe way. I'd be happy to double or triple
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  that number, but the law enforcement numbers probably don't support even that high of a percentage.
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  Now, here's kind of where I want to challenge this. Everybody's poor behavior, look at how
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  they're approaching animals or stepping off the boardwalks. There's other ways to break the rules
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  that we don't talk about, and I'm more than happy to quadruple my numbers of incidents if we include
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  some of these things. Let's throw in speeding. Let's talk about driving under the influence.
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  I think saying a few thousand people a year doing that in the park sounds correct,
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  but social media and websites don't talk about speeding or driving under the influence when
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  they're talking about bad park behavior. This is why I lose respect for people who use the word
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  tour on and constantly talk about the viral videos they see in the park. It's not the reality of what's
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  going on the park. I know I'm in the park all the time. Yes, again, there are people breaking
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  rules, not denying that, but it's not this rampant, everyone's doing it, the park is going to hell
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  sort of thing. It's just not happening. Okay, rant's over. Let's get back to visitation statistics.
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  So the monthly visitation in 2024, January had a little over 42,000 people. February had a little
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  over 49,000 people. March had over 32,000. April with over 71,000. May had 522,450. June had 914,612.
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  July had 992,353 visitors. And August had 868,259. September had 852,435.
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  And October had 346,025 before November saw just over 20,000 and December had 30,000.
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  In the 366 days of 2024, the park had an average of 12,963 people a day. I rounded up on that one.
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  It was like 12,962.7863 or something like that. With all those people, one thing I really like
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  to look at is how many cars were in Yellowstone in 2024. So we're also going to throw in snowmobiles
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  real quick. There were 3,260 snowmobiles that entered the park in 2024. Those were either from
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  people with permits or snowmobile tours, primarily, actually only happening, I won't say primarily,
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  only happening in the winter months. One of the things that people like to complain about is all
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  of the tour buses in the park. The tour bus number for 2024 was 5,397 for the entire year.
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  Now recreation vehicles, how most of us get in driving our own cars or a rental car,
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  there were 1,779,012 recreation vehicles entering the park in 2024. So anytime I hear the,
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  there's too many buses in the park, there were 5,397. There were 1.7 million cars.
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  So do that information what you will. What were the most popular entrances to the park in 2024?
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  I'm just going to read down through there and then talk about each one. So the East Gate
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  had 166,942 cars and the busiest month was July with 37,711. Overall traffic during the summer at
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  this entrance was below the 10-year average. Now the North Gate up in Gardner saw 533,276 cars
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  and the busiest month was also July with 89,826. Overall traffic during the summer at this
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  entrance was above the 10-year average. However, there were rarely, if ever, any lines to enter.
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  The Northeast Gate out by Cook City and Silvergate, they saw 133,228 cars enter and their busiest month
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  July. I think you're going to see a trend here. July had 29,437 cars entering. Overall traffic
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  during the summer at this entrance was above the 10-year average. So the South Gate down as you're
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  headed toward Jackson and the Tetons saw 290,623 cars and the busiest month was July with 65,893.
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  And the traffic during the summer at this entrance was below the 10-year average.
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  Now the West Gate saw 777,409 cars and the busiest month was July with 168,579.
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  Overall traffic during the summer at this entrance was above the 10-year average.
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  And then I do have to include Highway 191. This doesn't really count as an
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  entrance station. It's the road connecting Bozeman and Big Sky to West Yellowstone.
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  So it's actually a highway. It's not really the park. It's in this gray area. But they saw
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  1,095,111 cars and overall traffic during the summer along this stretch of the road was above
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  the 10-year average. Something that you see most everywhere in the park. So as always,
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  West Yellowstone was the busiest entrance for the year. In June West had 151,177 cars. July saw 164,541.
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  August had 136,492. And September had 132,527. To put that in perspective with the rest of the park,
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  the second busiest gate in those same months was the North Gate and Gardner. And they saw
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  about half or less than half the number of cars per month that West Yellowstone saw.
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  So where does everyone stay when they visit the park? I mean, we kind of know this answer, but
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  I like to break this down. The total overnight stays in Yellowstone for 2024 were 1,262,912.
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  Concessionaire lodging, which is the lodges inside the park, saw 684,474 stays, with June
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  being the busiest month. The Concessionaire campgrounds were 425,948 stays, with August
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  being the busiest month. Now the National Park Service campgrounds saw 110,267 stays,
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  which will July be in the busiest month. The back country that is run by the National Park Service
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  saw 37,280 stays, with August being the busiest month. And then there were some
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  miscellaneous stays. There were 4,943 miscellaneous stays. And from what I can tell,
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  that is the Youth Conservation Corps and Construction Crews staying and they're counted
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  separately. If I get any information about if that's true or not, for sure, I will let you know.
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  But that is based on my best assumption of just kind of looking through all of this for the last
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  decade like I've been doing. So I mentioned back country camping. And it's something I want to
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  talk about briefly. So back country camping was down 2.6% from 2023. And 2024 was the lowest back
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  country camping year since 2006. Now technically 2022 was lower, but the park was closed for a few
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  weeks and access to the northern range, where a large amount of back country camping occurs,
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  was severely limited in access for most of the year. So that's kind of that's thrown out as a
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  non normal year. The decrease in back country camping speaks to the movement of most park
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  visitors over the last two decades. Fewer people are going beyond the paved roads and established
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  camping areas. And so it's making the wilderness of Yellowstone even more wild than ever. Now,
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  obviously the 37,280 people in the back country is quite a lot, but that number is, like I said,
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  it's lower than every other year except for 2006, excluding 2022. But we are seeing less people
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  camping and there's a few reasons for that. But largely, it's just a lot more effort and it's
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  a little harder to do. So not a lot of people are doing it. So if you want to see Yellowstone,
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  how very few people are doing it, start camping in the back country. All right, so what months are
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  getting more busy? I didn't have a good title for this. I'm sure someone else will think of one. So
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  if you do, let me know. I will happily change it for next years. If I remember, if you remember,
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  probably won't. So what's getting busier in the park? When is getting busier in the park? And
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  I've written about the myth of visiting an empty park in September. A lot of people say, well,
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  if you want to avoid people in the park, go in September. The kids are back in school and it's
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  empty. And I am here to say, again, that is not true. The end of September is less busy than the
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  first part of the month. But September is very busy. It sees nearly the same amount of visitors
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  as the park does in August. In 2014, September saw 571,764 visitors. And that was 200,000
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  less visitors than August of that same year. In 2024, a decade later, September had 852,435
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  visitors, a decrease of just under 16,000 from August of 2024. That is a huge jump. There's
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  other months that have seen a big increase as well. But September is the one that I hear most
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  often about, oh, it's so empty. It's not. There's lines in west coming in. It's still a busy month
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  until you get to the second half of the month. And then it starts to drop off pretty quick.
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  So October has also seen a big increase in visitation over the last decade. Visitation numbers
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  in 2014 were 194,804 and rose to 346,025 in October. The increase in visitation is occurring every
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  month of the year. I mean, obviously, if we're growing in visitation every year, then every month
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  will be higher. But there's a few more big jumps. So April has more than doubled in visitation in
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  the last 10 years, seeing 71,784 visitors in 2024 compared to 31,356 in 2014. May has also gotten
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  busier, gaining 200,000 people for the month of the last decade. November has nearly doubled over
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  the last decade in visitation, but still remains the least visited month. 2024 had just 21,133
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  visitors. And even March, when people say March is the worst time to visit the park, you'll hear
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  that a lot, March and April, worst time to visit the park. It's not true either. People just, it's
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  a different park visit, but there is no worse time. But March has risen from a little under 19,000
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  people visiting in 2014 to 32,000 people in 2024. So what does all this mean for visitation in 2025?
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  Great question. There's a lot I could say that would just be me talking nonsense,
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  but here are some things that I can, that I will be willing to at least not wager on,
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  come close to wagering on, if that makes sense, because I'm not a gambler and I don't believe
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  that if I gamble on something that'll ever happen. So I'm a Mariners fan, so why would I have hope
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  that anything I want to happen will happen? Not that I want these things to happen. Weird aside,
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  sorry, let's get back to this. Anyway, I see in 2025 that there is a good potential for us to see
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  the busiest May in history. That's not really going out on a limb too far. That's kind of what
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  things are shaping up to be if the weather holds. July may crack the million visitor mark for the
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  second time in history. It may seem like really that's only the second time, but yeah, it's only
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  the second time. And 2024 came so close. They were 7,648 visitors short of a million. I think
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  September visitation will continue to grow, as will nearly every other month. I also anticipate
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  that the North entrance at Gardner will get a little more busy than in previous years. In 2020,
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  it was COVID. 2021, still kind of a weird COVID year. Not everything was open. 2020 also had a
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  fire that happened in Gardner. Then 2022, the flooding happened to limit people's ability
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  to enter the park from the region for the entire summer. And even last year, I was hearing that
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  people didn't think the North entrance to the park was open. It's been open. It was only closed for a
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  couple months during the flooding of 2022. It's been open and more and more people are realizing
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  that. So I see some potential for lines actually developing in Gardner where the last few years
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  we really haven't. That's kind of my guess for 2025. So I'm going to wrap this up now
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  as I could either stop here or go on for another hour or so. As I love getting in the weeds on
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  these numbers, the biggest takeaway to have from this is that the park will be busier through June,
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  will be busier from June through September than any other time of the year. It always is.
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  Yes, park visitation is increasing, but not to an alarming rate. Our country is growing in population
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  too. So don't let the amount of people visiting Yellowstone each year. Keep you away. If you want
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  to visit the park, come visit the park. If it inspires you, then come visit. Don't let any
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  numbers scare you. Numbers are just part of the story. The park's huge. So there's tons of lesser
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  known but equally stunning experiences. But also, if you're kind of wanting to visit the park and
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  you need advice to avoid some crowds here and there, let me know and I'll do my best to help.
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  Throughout the year, I'll be giving tips and tricks from a local, since I'm a local, on how to avoid
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  the busiest times of the day at the well-known locations. I also have some guidebooks to help
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  you find solitude beyond the boardwalks and where to see the wildlife in the park. I also offer
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  hiking tours far from the popular spots, helping you see the true wilds of Yellowstone. With that,
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  I'm going to end this, but I do want to say that all Yellowstone visitation statistics used were from
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  imra.nps.gov.
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  This week in Yellowstone is brought to you by the Outdoor Society, because that's my company,
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  and that's where this is hosted. There are no sponsors, there's no ad breaks, this is a labor
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  of love, so thank you all for listening. Copyright 2025, baby!