While the final numbers for the 2024 attendance in Yellowstone National Park won't be in until late winter, it appears the record 2021 attendance year will retain its title despite increased early summer numbers and a great October, according to a park official.

"[Year to date] numbers (through October) currently show that this is the second busiest year on record," said Yellowstone spokesperson Linda Veress. "We don't have any reason to believe the data for 2024 will change significantly."

As of the end of October, there have been 4,692,810 recreational visits, according to official National Park Service (NPS) statistics. In 2021 the total recreation visits were 4,860,242.

Yellowstone National Park hosted 346,025 recreation visits last month. This is a 16% increase from October of 2023 (299,127 recreational visits). This October’s visitation showed a 9% increase from October 2021 (316,662 recreation visits).

So far in 2024, recreation visits park-wide are up 6% from 2023 (4,446,509 recreation visits), yet down 2% from 2021. Meanwhile, visits originating at the East Entrance near Cody were down more than 3% in 2024 compared to 2023 attendance. Year-to-date visitations through the East Entrance stand at 440,423, a 3.05% decrease compared to 2023. It was the only entrance that had a net loss this year. In the past decade, visitation through the East Entrance is down close to 25,000 visits with 464,765 at Park County, Wyoming's only entrance.

At the same time, attendance through the Northeast Entrance so far this year stands at 302,249; nearly 100,000 visits more than a decade ago. There were 204,489 visits entering through the Northeast Gate in 2014. So far, Northeast Entrance visitations are up more than 11% compared to October of 2023.

Part of the reason for the near miss this year can be chalked up to Mother Nature. Very low snowfall during December and January resulted in poor over-snow road conditions in some parts of the park. The West Entrance road was closed to snowmobiles for a portion of January and the road from Mammoth to Madison was closed to snowmobiles for the entire month.

One glaring statistic in the past 24 years is the number of employees compared to the rise in visitations. While nearly 2 million more visits are counted in the park since it crossed the 3 million recreational visits mark in 2002, the number of employees servicing visitors has stayed generally between 500 and 550 employees.

Since 2008, when attendance started to increase quickly, annual visitation has increased close to 40%, "causing overflowing parking lots, a rise in traffic jams, roadside soil erosion and vegetation trampling, and unsanitary conditions around busy bathrooms," according to park statistics.

Half of this increase in visitation occurred in just two years (2014-2016), coupled by an even greater rise in motor vehicle accidents (up 90%), ambulance use (up 60%), and search and rescue efforts (up 130%) over the same time period. Meanwhile, funding has remained flat over the past decade.

In the 2023 State of the Park Report, the park addressed the substantial increase in visitation over the past decades. Although most visitor impacts occur within the road corridor and developed areas, less than 7% of the park, Yellowstone is developing a new visitor use management strategy that focuses heavily on better understanding and responding to visitor impacts on resources across the park. The park’s strategy focuses on visitor impacts to park resources, park staffing, operations and infrastructure, visitor experience and the effect on gateway communities.

The priorities focus on providing a high-quality visitor experience for the millions who visit each year while simultaneously ensuring that park resources are protected, according to the report.

The park has spent the last seven years monitoring impacts of increasing visitation on resources, staff and infrastructure, visitor experience and gateway communities. Officials have implemented a wide range of short-term actions designed to manage visitation, provide quality public safety services, and minimize impacts to resources more effectively.

The park is now working on a variety of potential long-term actions that will help address future challenges associated with increasing visitation levels, according to park reports.