Yellowstone breaks September and annual visitation records
by Yellowstone National Park
October 5, 2010
It’s official. Yellowstone National Park has already broken last year’s record visitation figure, with three months left in the calendar year.
For the first time ever, Yellowstone National Park hosted over half a million visitors during September. The 550-thousand recreational visitors to the park last month shattered the previous September record of nearly 490-thousand set last year. September was the fourth record breaking month in a row for Yellowstone.
Park visitation during the first nine months of the year topped 3.41 million, above the 3.14 million who came to Yellowstone during the same period on 2009. With three months to go in 2010, year-to-date visitation has topped last year’s record annual visitation record of 3,295,187.
Recreational Visitors
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May
2010: 250,445
2009: 261,763
Change: - 4.3%
June
2010: 694,841
2009: 643,844
Change: + 7.9%
July
2010: 957,785
2009: 900,515
Change: + 6.4%
August
2010: 854,837
2009: 752,983
Change: + 13.5%
September
2010: 550,504
2009: 489,438
Change: + 12.5%
Total Year-To-Date
2010: 3,416,905
2009: 3,143,816
Change: + 8.7%
Recreational Visitors in September
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2010 550,504, Year to Year Change: + 12.5%
2009 489,438, Year to Year Change: + 11.9%
2008 437,552, Year to Year Change: - 5.7%
2007 463,994, Year to Year Change: + 8.3%
2006 428,369, Year to Year Change: + 8.9%
2005 393,362
Visitation figures were up at all five park entrances when compared to year-ago levels. The West Entrance remains the park’s busiest, with nearly 216,000 visitors in September.
July is typically the park’s peak visitation month, followed by August, June, September, and May. In 2009, the park recorded just over 150,000 visitors during the months of October, November, and December.
Detailed park visitation information is available online at http://www.nature.nps.gov/stats/.
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