May YNP Numbers Down from 2016

Partly because of late spring snowstorms, fewer people visited Yellowstone National Park in May as compared to a year ago.
But it was still the second busiest May on record at the world’s first national park. Yellowstone hosted more than 419,600 visits during May, down 5.6 percent from May of 2016. But that’s still up from the last five years’ total numbers – according to the National Park Service, around 340,000 people on average have entered the gates of Yellowstone between 2012 and 2016 in May. And year-to-date visitation in 2017 is 28.7 percent higher than it was just five years ago in 2013.
While many factors could be at play, park managers point to road closures due to snow this May and the celebration in 2016 of the National Park Service Centennial year as influences in visitation.
So far this year, the park has counted more than 550,000 visitors, down 7.3 percent from the same period in 2016, which was the National Park Service centennial year. And looking at last month as compared to the rest of the year, May visitation only accounts for less than ten percent of the entire visitor numbers for any given year.