Bonus: January 2025 Yellowstone National Park Visitation Statistics Special

This week's bonus episode is all about January's visitation statistics. If you want to know how many people entered the park in January, where they entered from, and where they stayed, this episode is for you.

A regular episode will be posted on Thursday, as always.

Episode Transcript

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From inside my warm home in Livingston, Montana, where it's currently negative two degrees outside

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and we have two feet of snow on the ground, this is a b-b-b-bonus episode of This Week in Yellowstone.
What's the topic? January visitation for Yellowstone National Park.
There is nothing funnier, well that's not true, there are lots of things funnier, but the abruptness

(00:34):
at which this theme song ends, but when I start talking again it makes me laugh and I hope it
makes you laugh too because it's always a little jarring and a little bit like whoa what's going on,
but yeah, welcome to another episode, like I said off the bat, this is a bonus episode
and this week I am talking about the January visitation 2025 for Yellowstone National Park.

(00:58):
The numbers were recently released, I'm recording this on February 18th, 2025 and like I said this
episode I'm going to dive into the visitation for Yellowstone, give you some interesting facts and
figures and also let you know kind of what this means for the rest of the year potentially.
I'm going to be doing this every month so obviously I'm saying obviously a lot, sorry about that.

(01:25):
January is a tough one to gauge how the rest of the year is going, how the first month of the year
kicks off is always just kind of a crap shoot for how the year will go, whether it's impacting travel,
any number of issues, you know we've had some years where January sees record visitation and then
the rest of the year doesn't quite have that same zeal. So again, not sure what the takeaway will be

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from this one but there's some interesting stats that I think you'll enjoy so stay tuned. And if
numbers do not interest you, you don't have to listen to this podcast episode, I'm not going to feel
bad. In a couple days I'll be releasing the next this week in Yellowstone that we'll talk about
everything you know and love. This is just like I said every week this is a passion project and I

(02:16):
enjoy talking about park visitation. So let's get into January's numbers. January of 2025 saw 40,363
recreation visitors. That number if I'm clicking through my tabs is the eighth most popular January
on record. You may think oh the last eight years were also or last seven years were also very good

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with the 40,363 the years that have had more popular that were more popular had more visitation
were 2024, 2023, 2022 and then we go all the way down to 2002, 2001, 1995 and 1994 as years that

(03:06):
had more January visitation than 2025. Obviously the last few years are just like oh yeah that
makes sense you know there's a ebb and a flow to it 2022 saw 46,000 visitors 2023 saw 45,000 2024
saw 42,000 but the numbers that stood out to me when I was putting this together were 1994 and

(03:30):
1995. 95 makes sense because there was some hype for the wolves coming in the wolves were released
in January of 1995 and so you know there's some excitement there but 1994 couldn't tell you why
that number is at 40,000 nearly 41,000 visitors that is way higher than it should be to put that

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in perspective 1991 had 28,000 1997 had 31,000 I mean obviously some of that's probably the
weather conditions things like that but still when we're looking at park visitation it's really
interesting to look way back and to look at every sort of trend and to know that you know

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there were years in the 90s and even in the 80s where park visitation was pretty high compared
to the US population you know 2001 and 2002 we had a high visitation again can't really tell you why
why because in 2002 we had 40,465 visitors but by 2004 there are just 22,817 now again I do know

(04:44):
that there is a slight skew to these numbers because you used to be able to also take your own
snowmobiles into the park so more people would go into the interior however that's a big jump
anyway because I don't know it's it's not it's not kind of a normal number to see

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you know the same amount of people entering the park now as in the 90s when you think about the
prevalent kind of conversation about how parks are being overloved and loved to death where
um January of 94 95 saw more people than January of 2025 so do with that information what you will

(05:29):
I found it kind of interesting when I was looking at everything and wanted to share it with you all
so let's look at this January and how it compared to last year last year saw 42,740 visitors
that we had a decrease this year of 5.56 percent there were a few more non recreation visitors

(05:51):
this year which is employees things like that but that makes sense that that doesn't really
factor in too much of anything visitor hours how the park collects those couldn't tell you probably
should dive into that but park visitor hours for recreation visitors 715,313 couldn't tell you what

(06:12):
that means um just one of those numbers so where are people going into the park the answer is pretty
simple the overwhelming majority of visitors to the park entered through the north gate and then
the west gate the north gate up in Gardner 25,088 so 25088 the west gate 11,926 the south gate had

(06:43):
3049 visitors the northeast gate doesn't technically count uh they do not have the counter going
right now because if you drive into the park through the west gate and go to cook city and
then drive back you're considered one visitor but the east gate had 300 visitors so not a lot of
people coming in the park from Cody which makes sense that's just a long snow it's not a snowshoe

(07:09):
long snowmobile trip and there's not really the infrastructure out there that there is say
out of west Yellowstone or even at the south gate i think the shocking number here really is that
south gate with over 3000 visitors i think we overlook the south gate and we talk about winter
recreation quite a bit but 3000 people is a decent amount i mean that's it's a hundred a day so not

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too bad all right so how many people stayed in the park another fun little thing to put together
concessioner lodging so lodging at Old Faithful or in mammoth they had 9,578 the total was 9,623
for overnight stays which means that 45 people in january stayed at the mammoth campground

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the national park service does a fun thing of keeping track of tents versus RVs and 18 visitors
camped in tents in january of 2025 while 27 stayed in RVs you know again i don't know what you're
supposed to do with that information but if you are one of those 18 people that tent camped

(08:22):
like congratulations i am all four people doing that when they have the right gear it's nothing i
would probably personally do but you know it's it's still a fun thing to do uh if you're if you're
into being cold i think the RVs make a little more sense but still that that number is pretty low

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for campers it's only 45 if we want to compare it to last year to 2024 we can't the mammoth campground
was not open last year and i could dive in and figure out like previous years but i'm not i'm
not going to no one really cares that much if you do reach out to me i can give you those numbers

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like i said the total number of overrides overnight stays 9,623 in the park so those are the lucky few
there were obviously far more people staying in west yellowstone out in cook city and silver gate
and up in gardener and even all the way through paradise valley and living stand that would go
into the park but those that stayed in the park just under 10 000 which is a decent amount so when

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we break this down a little further this year the old faithful snow lodge so far in january 5,642
visitors while the mammoth hotel had 3,936 visitors the old faithful snow lodge actually saw an
increase of 17.4 percent from the previous year while old faithful saw 13.3 percent increase total

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lodge stays averaged out to a 15.7 percent increase in visitors from the previous year but again
what's interesting is that visitation this year was less than last year but we're seeing more
people staying in the park now there was one thing that i wanted to mention about camping that i
forgot to earlier but according to the park there were zero backcountry campers in january this year

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the only reason i bring that up is because supposedly there were 53 backcountry campers last
year so we saw a hundred percent decrease but that 53 number and that zero number 53 is correct for
last january the zero may just be taking longer to get registered through the park website which

(10:46):
is where i'm getting all of this information so while i'm almost done with the january visitation
records because it is the first month and there's not a lot to talk about i do want to point out one
trend that i am seeing over the last few years that is important to note and that is the traffic
count on highway 191 now if you're familiar with highway 191 it is that road that connects west

(11:12):
yellowstone to big sky and then up to bozeman this year supposedly there were around 51,600
people that drove through that is pretty high historically because the highest number was 2022
with 54,870 visitors in january since 191 is just a major road that goes through the park that is an

(11:42):
actually an entrance station we tend not to count these as visitation however we can look at this
section of the road and kind of see is the area itself getting more popular and more visited
so more people might be going instead of going to west yellowstone they might be going to big
sky from island park or from Idaho or driving down to the t-tons or island park or elsewhere in Idaho

(12:08):
from bozeman from belgrade from four corners and through the gallatin gateway so looking at that
that's just an interesting thing that i'm noticing this was the doing some quick math right now it
looks like about the fourth or fifth busiest january on highway 191 and remember how i mentioned

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like oh there are some years 2001 and 2002 and then 95 and 96 that were pretty high those numbers for
highway 191 for those years are actually much lower and more consistent so this was a very
trafficked january for highway 191 so finally what does this mean for the year uh it's too early to

(12:55):
tell i think we're going to have a busy year i don't think that is a rough prediction or a difficult
prediction i think yellowstone's going to see top five years that's an easy prediction we might see
top one or two years of visitation this year january is just off to a slower than last year

(13:16):
start but not by enough to really say that oh yeah people aren't coming february's numbers
may be low too just because we have had some snow and while the snow hasn't necessarily
hit the park as hard as it's hit the surrounding areas it has hit the surrounding areas pretty hard
interstate 90 that connects bozeman to livingston and then from livingston you swing south on highway

(13:42):
89 to get to gardener in that north entrance the pass has been closed for hours at a time
days at a time and it's been pretty snowy so that's going to impact travel we will see what that does
when the february numbers are released in early to mid march but until then i can say that park

(14:02):
visitation is still consistent we are off to a busy start but not the busiest start and it's been a
snowy or winter so if it wasn't a snowy maybe we would have seen higher numbers but with that
i thank you for listening to this bonus episode of this week in yellowstone and i will be back in

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a couple of days with the newest episode covering what you need to know to visit the park this coming
week until then take it easy enjoy winter and know that as i'm recording this we are about one month
away from rocky mountain bluebirds returning to yellowstone national park i'm going to talk about
that more in a couple of weeks but if you listen to this whole bonus episode you get that little

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tidbit of information i usually see rocky mountain bluebirds around mid march so fingers crossed we
see them soon till then bye this week in yellowstone is brought to you by the outdoor society because

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that's my company and that's where this is hosted there are no sponsors there's no ad breaks
this is a labor of love so thank you all for listening copyright 2025 baby