Yellowstone NP Still On Pace For Second Busiest Year Ever For Recreational Visits

One year after the historic flood had a huge impact on visitor numbers, Yellowstone National Park is back to where it was, the year before the flood happened.

The park reports there were 299,127 recreational visits in October 2023.

That’s up 26% from October of last year (236,567), and up 75% from 2019 (171,339) which was the year before the covid pandemic started.

Year-to-date visitor numbers for the park as of the end of October are at 4,446,509, which is up 32% from the same time period last year (3,241,761) and up 12% from 2019 (3,979,154).

Numbers from 2021 are the only year that’s higher than this year which was at 4,789,349.

All roads within the park, except for the ones that connect the North to the Northeast Entrances are closed to motor vehicle traffic for the season.

This includes the West, South and East entrances.

They are scheduled to open to snowmobile and snowcoach traffic on December 15th, provided enough snow has built up on the roads.