For the third year in a row, Yellowstone National Park has seen over 900,000 visitors during the month of July. July has historically been the most popular month for visitors to the park, and this year was no different. Though the visits this year were a drop from last years record breaking 957,785 visits, 906,935 people visited the park in July 2011.
Last month’s visits is the second highest month ever recorded for the park. Visitation to the park overall has been lower than last year, but even so, it’s still the third highest year on record so far. Not too shabby! The lower visitation numbers are not exclusive to Yellowstone National Park, though. Across the country, there has been an overall drop of a little over 2% in visitation over last year’s July numbers.
At this point, there have been no formal conclusions as to why the numbers are lower overall this year, but I would not be surprised if weather was a large contributor. Here in the Northwest, Mount Rainier National Park is still under a heavy blanket of snow, and many popular trails are barely hikeable (so far this year only two people have completed the Wonderland Trail). On the other end of the spectrum, the rest of the country spent much of July in sweltering heat. Not exactly prime getting-outside weather.
Despite the reduced visitors last month at Yellowstone, it’s still on track to being the second highest visitation year in the books by year end. Following July, the most popular months for visitors are August, June, September, and May.
Press release available here, and for those that like to geek-out with numbers, check out the National Park Service’s Stats website.
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