It’s official, Yellowstone is hotter than a geyser with a bad attitude. The park welcomed 566,363 recreation visits in May 2025, making it the busiest May on record and up 8% from last year’s numbers. That’s a whole lot of bison selfies, geyser gazing, and traffic jams caused by elk doing absolutely nothing in the middle of the road.
To put it in perspective:
🔸 Up 20% from May 2021
🔸 Up 6% year-to-date from 2024
🔸 And nearly quadruple the visitation from pandemic-stalled 2020
Here’s how the year-to-date numbers stack up through May:
| Year | Recreation Visits |
|---|---|
| 2025 | 762,672 |
| 2024 | 719,127 |
| 2023 | 644,979 |
| 2022 | 733,471 (remember the flood?) |
| 2021 | 649,153 |
| 2020 | 145,849 (we don’t talk about that spring) |
With these crowds, summer in Yellowstone is shaping up to be a real-life episode of National Parks: Survivor Edition. So if you’re planning a visit, download the NPS app, read the rules, take the Yellowstone Pledge, and please, don’t pet the wildlife, no matter how photogenic they look.
📊 For more stats (because we know some of you love a good spreadsheet), head to the NPS Stats site.
