Yellowstone National Park set a new annual visitation record after the first nine months of 2021.
The National Park Service (NPS) reported Yellowstone hosting 4,472,982 visits in 2021 through September. The previous annual visitation record was 4,257,178 visits in 2016.
“Never in Yellowstone’s history have we seen such substantial visitation increases in such a short amount of time,” Superintendent Cam Sholly said.
Yellowstone National Park hosted 882,078 recreation visits in September 2021. The total is a 5% increase from September 2020 (837,114 recreation visits) and a 27% increase from September 2019 (693,118 recreation visits).
NPS said Yellowstone registered its busiest September on record. The month pushed Yellowstone’s annual visits past 4 million, the first time the milestone has been reached in September of any year.
So far in 2021, the park’s visits are up 32% from the same period last year and 17% from 2019.
“We will continue working with our teams and partners to develop and implement appropriate short- and long-term actions for managing increasing visitation across the park,” Sholly said. “My thanks to our teams here for working through a record visitation year, especially with the continued workforce challenges presented by COVID-19.”
The list below shows the year-to-date trend for recreation visits over the last several years (through September):
2021 – 4,472,982
2020 – 3,393,642
2019 – 3,807,815
2018 – 3,860,695
2017 – 3,872,775
2016 – 3,970,778
