Montana's Crowded Parks: Record Visitation is Taking its Toll

Nickerson, Norma

Did you “Find Your Park” in 2016 to help celebrate the 100th birthday of the National Park Service? This was the theme throughout the year on TV, radio, special events and special programming. If you didn’t visit a park, apparently you were one of the few who stayed away. The year 2016 will likely go down in the record books as the largest jump ever in year-to-year visitation for most national parks. Final 2016 numbers show Glacier was up 20 percent, Yosemite +20 percent, Zion +18 percent, Arches +13 percent and Crater Lake +23 percent. Yellowstone and Grand Canyon were up 4 percent and 8 percent respectively, but that follows increases of 17 percent and 16 percent in 2015. While national park managers were prepared for a good year, many were trying to respond to an unprecedented increase in visitation that simply did not stop – each month broke the previous years’ month visitation record. With Glacier and Yellowstone being Montana’s premier vacation destinations drawing nearly half of all nonresident visitors to one or both parks, how do these destinations deal with the unprecedented growth?