GTNP and Yellowstone Saw Big Visitor Jumps in 2024 – Second Busiest Year Ever

Yellowstone National Park just dropped its annual visitation numbers for 2024, and the park had quite a year, welcoming 4,744,353 recreation visits. That’s a 5.4% increase over 2023 and enough to make 2024 the second busiest year in Yellowstone’s long history (going all the way back to 1904).

Here’s a quick look at how recent years stack up:

Year	Recreation Visits	Rank All-Time
2021	4,860,242	1st
2024	4,744,353	2nd
2023	4,501,382	3rd

Yellowstone’s popularity has been growing for decades. Here’s a glance at some visitation milestones:

Milestone	Year Reached
1 million annual visits	1948
2 million annual visits	1965
3 million annual visits	1992
4 million annual visits	2015

And how’s 2025 shaping up so far? It’s still early, but here’s where things stand through March:

Month	Recreation Visits
January	40,363
February	44,133
March	33,284

Grand Teton National Park Visits Increased

National parks around the U.S. are seeing an uptick in visitors. Grand Teton National Park, just south of Yellowstone, also saw a bump, 3,628,222 visits in 2024, up from 3,417,106 in 2023. That makes 2024 its second busiest year ever, just trailing 2021’s peak of 3.88 million.

The entire National Park Service system hit an all-time high in 2024 with 331.8 million total recreation visits. That’s a 2% jump from the year before and a new record, edging out the previous high from 2016.