Yellowstone visitation down from 2019

Town Crier “Briefs from the Region” (1) – 7/14/20

Our nation’s first national park continues to draw recreationists during the busy summer season, but June numbers were down more than 30 percent over June 2019. The park was closed March 24 due to health and safety reasons related to COVID-19, but the two Wyoming entrances opened on May 18 and the three Montana entrances opened on June 1. For the entirety of June all five entrances were open to the public, yielding 534,155 visitors, a 32 percent decrease from June of last year. But visitation since has increased steadily and in the last two weeks of June, traffic counts ranged from 90 percent to 116 percent of 2019 numbers. There were no commercial bus visits during June 2020, which usually account for about 70,461 visits. In total, the park has hosted 667,290 visits this year for the months it was open, which is down 49 percent from the same period in 2019.