Yellowstone NP October 2022 Visitor Number Down But Up Compared To Pre-Pandemic

The trend of decreasing visitor numbers at Yellowstone National Park continued this past October, but there was a small sign of hope as the North and Northeast Entrances were reopened.

The park reports there were 232,117 recreational visits in October 2022.

That’s down 27% compared to October 2021 (316,662), but is up more than 35% compared to October 2019 (171,339), which was the last month that the park was open to motor vehicle traffic, before the COVID pandemic started.

The flood activity that occurred in June is mostly responsible for the drop in numbers.

Year to date numbers as of the end of October show there have been more than 3.246 million visits, which is down 32% compared to the same time frame last year.

With 2 months left in the year, and most of the park closed for the season, the numbers for 2022, will be the lowest number of yearly visits to the park since 2013 (3.188 million).

The roads that connect the north to the northeast entrances are open year round to motor vehicle traffic, but all other roads, including the west, south and east entrances, are closed for the season, so that snow can gather in those areas.

The park is scheduled to reopen those 3 entrances and most of the other roads to snowmobile and snow coach traffic on December 15th.

Snowplow crews will start clearing the roads for next year’s summer traveling season in mid-March.