Yellowstone Sets Summer Visitation Record
It has been a record-breaking summer for Yellowstone National Park. Visitation figures for June, July, and now August, have all shattered previous records.
Yellowstone hosted 854,837 visitors in August. It is the first time August visitation has passed the 800,000 mark, and is up more than 81,000 from the previous August record of 773,307 visitors set back in 1995.
Visitation for the 3 summer months topped 2.5 million. Visitation for the first 8 months of the year was almost 2.87 million.
Visitor numbers were up at all five park entrances when compared to year-ago levels. The West Entrance remains the park’s busiest, with over 345,000 visitors in August. The North Entrance saw the greatest percentage increase in visitors, up a whopping 20 percent from the same month in 2009.
Yellowstone hosted a record number of visitors in 2009. Nearly 3.3 million people visited the world’s first national park last year, up 7.5 percent from 2008 and up 4.6 percent from the previous record of 3.15 million visitors set in 2007. The park is on track to break the 2009 record this year.
July is typically the park’s peak visitation month, followed by August, June, September, and May.
