Yellowstone’s August visitation tops 871,000; on track for one of its busiest years

Yellowstone National Park didn’t have a record August for visitation this year, but the park is remaining on track for one of its busiest years.

More than 871,100 people visited Yellowstone last month, up 3% from August 2023 (more than 846,300 visitors). But 2021 holds the record so far, with more than 921,800 August visits. That year also ended with 4.86 million tourists, the highest yet recorded.

At a recent science conference, Yellowstone Superintendent Cam Sholly queried the gathering about when the park hosted it’s first million visitors. No one guessed it was as far back as 1948. The park topped 2 million visits 17 years later in 1965. It was then another 29 years before the park topped 3 million in 1994 and 21 years later, in 2015, the park topped 4 million.

“So we’ve had the luxury of, you know, 15 to 20 years between each additional million,” Sholly noted

With the park nearing 5 million annual visits, Sholly questioned whether the Park Service has the necessary staffing and the infrastructure capacity to handle such a large flux of recreationists, adding it’s one of the biggest issues facing the park.

 

“You have wastewater systems built in the ’70s when visitation was 2 million,” he noted. “The same systems are now trying to support 4-and-a-half to 5 million.”

 

The West Entrance at West Yellowstone continues to lead as the most popular access point to the park. This year there were more than 137,600 autos passing through the town of 1,200 summer residents, and that just counts those going into Yellowstone, not coming out. The north gate at Gardiner recorded more than 70,000 autos in August.