YNP Has Busiest August on Record
Written by Andrew-Rossi on September 13, 2017
Yellowstone National Park had its busiest August on record, although year to date numbers are still down from last year.
The park hosted 916,166 visits in August 2017, which is up almost nine percent from August of 2016. This year, the park experienced increased visitation during the days immediately surrounding the solar eclipse that occurred on August 21. An especially large number of visits occurred on August 22.
Jonathan Shafer, with the Public Affairs office at Yellowstone, says that while the eclipse contributed heavily to the numbers, the staff was already prepared for busy summer visitation.
Traffic congestion on the 22nd caused the park to briefly limit access to the Old Faithful and West Thumb Geyser Basin parking areas as well as to send rangers to manage traffic at Madison Junction.
So far in 2017, the park has hosted 3,232,708 visits – that’s down just over 1 percent from the same period in 2016 (which was the highest on record). But year-to-date visitation in 2017 is over 17 percent higher than five years ago in 2012.
