Glacier, Yellowstone notch second-highest visitation years on record
A NPS ranger monitors a packed parking lot at Logan Pass in Glacier National Park. (Image via NPS)
Glacier National Park and Yellowstone National Park both welcomed the second highest number of visitors on record last year, according to visitation data released by the National Park Service late last month.
More than 3,208,755 visitors passed through one of Glacier's entrances during 2024, nearly 300,000 more than in 2023. It was just the fourth year the number of visitors has eclipsed 3 million and came close to the 2017 record of 3.3 million.
The boost in recreation visits came outside of the traditional busy season, with Glacier recording all-time record numbers in May, as well as in September and October, following the end of the vehicle reservation system that manages access to the popular destination and was in place between Memorial Day Weekend and Labor Day Weekend.
The reservation system, first adopted in 2021 to relieve pandemic-era congestions, has been widely deemed a success by park officials for helping staff manage numbers during the peak summer months.
During its banner year in 2017, Glacier saw more than 1 million visitors in July and more than 900,000 in August. In 2024, those numbers moderated to 750,000 and 790,000 respectively. September and October numbers, however, have jumped 60% compared to 2017.
'The vehicle reservation pilot was able to manage the larger number of visitors in September by allowing visitors without a vehicle reservation to explore the Apgar area, enter through the St. Mary Entrance, where the park is less congested, and go to Two Medicine. Allowing visitors to access Apgar and the St. Mary Entrance spread visitors throughout the park, instead of visitors primarily accessing the West Entrance,' Glacier spokesperson Autumn Sifuentes told the Daily Montanan last year
Glacier saw a substantial increase in visitation beginning in 2016, and park officials instigated the vehicle reservation system in 2021 as a pilot program. The reservation system has changed each year as officials have solicited feedback from visitors, concessionaires and local business owners, and different entrances and timeframes that require reservations have been tested in various iterations.
In 2024, the pilot program removed the St. Mary entrance on the park's east side from the reservation system, and moved the check point to access Going-to-the-Sun Road on the west side past the Apgar Visitor Center, allowing visitors access to some park facilities and park shuttles without needing a reservation. Roughly half of the park's visitors enter through the West Entrance.
'Moving the vehicle reservation check point to the Apgar check point ... meant more visitors entered through the West Entrance,' Sifuentes told the Daily Montanan. 'The St. Mary Entrance had a larger spike in visitors than previous years, as a vehicle reservation was not required in 2024. Even with the increase in visitors, we were able to manage congestion issues without any closures.'
In 2025, visitors will only need advanced reservations to access the North Fork area at Polebridge and the West Glacier entrance to the Going-to-the-Sun Road. Reservations will be required from June 13 through Sept. 28, to reflect shifting visitor patterns.
There will also be a shift toward timed entry reservations at the Park's western entrances, letting visitors enter during a specific time block to further reduce congestion.
Yellowstone National Park hosted 4,744,353 visitors last year, also the second highest year on record, according to National Park Service data. That marked a 5% increase from 2023 and was just 115,000 lower than in 2021, the park's record-setting year.
Similar to Glacier, Yellowstone received a boost in visitor numbers beginning in 2015 and has recorded more than 4 million visitors every year since with two exceptions — 2020, when COVID-19 limited park operations, and in 2022 when historic flooding shut down the park during June.
The popularity of Montana's two national parks helps anchor the state's recreation economy, which provided a more than $1.3 billion economic boost to to communities near the parks in 2023, according to a report released by the NPS last year.
More data on park visitation, including how that National Park Service calculates these numbers, is available on the NPS Stats website.
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