If you were in Yellowstone National Park last year, pat yourself on the back. You helped push the park's annual visitation to a record 3,640,184 heads.
That turnout marks the second year in a row, and the third time in the past four years, that a visitation record has been set, according to park officials. The 2009 visitation of 3,295,187 now sits in second-place in the park's records.
In galloping toward that annual record last year, the park set monthly visitation records in June, July, August, September, and October.
All park entrances recorded annual visitation increases compared to 2009 levels, park officials said. Double-digit percentage increases were recorded through the North and West entrances. The West Entrance continues to be the park’s busiest, with nearly 1.5 million recreational visitors in 2010.
Park managers believe the record visitation was due in part to the public’s recognition that visits to national parks represent a good value for their travel dollar. Aggressive promotion by state tourism offices, stable gasoline prices, and last year’s public television series on the national parks are also believed to have contributed to Yellowstone’s record visitation in 2010.
Yellowstone National Park
Annual Recreational Visitors
Rank Year Visitation
1 2010 3,640,184
2 2009 3,295,187
3 2007 3,151,343
4 1992 3,144,405
5 1999 3,131,381
6 1995 3,125,285
7 1998 3,120,830
8 2008 3,066,570
9 1994 3,046,145
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Comments
I know this is probably a dumb question, but just how accurate is that number?
Do fee collectors keep tabs of the number of occupants in each vehicle or is it based on some kind of "average?"
All I know for sure is that at least 1/2 of them were on Dunraven Pass one day when I tried to drive over it.
Lee, for a whole range of reasons -- unstaffed entrance gates, hikers coming through on long-distance treks or from neighboring national forests, vehicle-passenger estimates used by the Park Service that vary throughout the year, malfunctioning counters -- I would say the 3,640,184 number is not 100 percent spot on, as the Brits would say.
It's likely in the ballpark, but it's a 2.2-million-acre ballpark!
How on earth can anyone rationalize reporting a ballpark estimate carried to seven digits?! Would someone in the National Park Service please explain that one to me?
Right, Kurt and Bob. Maybe that's why a long time ago, we always cited our visitation figures as "estimated" and rounded off to the nearest hundred or thousand depending upon the size of our NPS location.
I was just wondering if new technology had somehow changed all that.