Stretch summer out by another month or two and Yellowstone National Park could almost single-handedly push the National Park System to a visitation record for the year.
Yellowstone, which set new visitation highs for June and July, did so again in August, by a wide margin. According to a park release, the park hosted 854,837 visitors in August. Not only is that the first time August visitation has eclipsed the 800,000 mark, but it's up more than 81,000 from the previous August record of 773,307 visitors set back in 1995, according to Yellowstone officials.
Visitation for the 3 summer months topped 2.5 million. Visitation for the first 8 months of the year was almost 2.87 million.
Comments
Well 2 more are coming from Ohio this Sept. C-Ya on down the trail......
That's an amazing number! Has there been any increased geyser activity or increased coverage in the media to cause this? Either way, it's well deserved and I really should be going over there soon.
Kurt,
Yellowstone is truly having a banner year, but your insinuation that the NPS is anywhere near breaking its own record year is off base. When compared to last year, NPS Public Use Statistics show that, system wide, the number of total of recreational visits is off by slightly more than 3 million visits through the end of August. And last year was not the high-water mark for visitation. I apologize on calling you out, if it was not your intent to make this assertion. Especially since it is not such a big deal in such a light-hearted article; but I thought you might want to watch the hyperbole, so as to not loose credibility in your other articles. I thank you for your efforts and please keep up the good work. I truly enjoy peeking in to your site every once in a while.
Toothdoctor,
I think when NPS visitation is the topic, hyperbole isn't necessarily uncalled for. The Park Service long has been questioned about the accuracy of its head counts, many of which are no more than guesstimates, and loose ones at that.
True, the agency's Public Use statistics page does indeed show year-to-date traffic down by almost 3.2 million from last year. But if you look at the individual parks' year-to-date totals, you have to raise an eyebrow or two.
For instance, one-third of that 3.2 million dip can be accounted for by one unit -- Amistad NRA in Texas. But how reliable is that?
According to the NPS, this year visitation to Amistad through September (yes, September, even though we still have a third of the month to go), was 1,328,911, while last year the tally through September was 2,337,149. Granted, there were flooding problems at Amistad this summer associated with Hurricane Alex, but that supposedly only affected the park's campgrounds for two or three weeks, and yet the head count is down by 1 million? Perhaps there was another reason that greatly limited access to the NRA this year, and if so I'd be curious to know what it was.
And yet, Gulf Islands National Seashore, which was plagued by oil from Deepwater Horizon as well as beach closure orders, shows an increase of 32,306?
Let's look elsewhere in the park system. Is it really possible that, when you compare September 2009 visitation to September 2010 (which, again, isn't quite done), that so many parks had identical head counts for the two months? If you look at this page, there are literally dozens of park units that have no difference in the two months' tallies.
And even if you discard that as just bum data, and consider the year-to-date numbers accurate, they too invite speculation. For instance, Devils Postpile National Monument has identical head counts through September 2009 and September 2010, at 105,027. Isn't that odd, when there are still 10 days left in this September?
When Salem Maritime National Historic Site reports identical year-to-date counts of more than half a million -- 514,736 -- don't you wonder how accurate that is?
And what about Yellowstone? As the story above notes, park officials say they counted 854,837 visitors in August, and that through the first eight months of 2010 they had counted about 2.87 million. But at the Public Use page it shows that Yellowstone, year-to-date, has seen 3,355,840 visitors, which includes 489,438 visits for yet-to-be-completed September. That just doesn't square, does it? And that 489,438 number, by the way, is the same as was reflected for September 2009.
And does it seem plausible that Arches National Park can be up by almost 20,000 visits, and Capitol Reef up by 31,075, and yet Canyonlands is down 66,624?
Finally, I don't believe I asserted that last year was the "high-water mark for visitation," either in Yellowstone or throughout the entire system. But I think a case can be made that the Park Service does not have a sound and accurate system for counting visitors. There are just too many parks that use estimates, that don't track traffic coming in all entrances, and which unstaff main entrance stations at various times to produce an unquestionable total.
Kurt,
A couple of points:
First off, I did not mean to imply that you asserted that last year was the "high-water mark for visitation". I only meant to use last year as comparison because it was not the the "high-water mark", and the raw data showed that, overall, this year's visitation is lagging behind. I apologize for the confusion.
Second, you can specify the cutoff for the Yellowstone data to only include visitation through the end of August, it will accurately match up to the asserted 2.87 million by the Park.
Third, the increase at Gulf Islands National Seashore that you questioned could simply and sadly be chalked up to rubber-necking. My opinion is that many people are fasinated by accidents, and its possible that people wanted to try to see the fallout of the DeepWater Horizon firsthand.
Lastly, and probably most importantly, thank you for specifying that there are unreliable methods used in determining the reported totals. I always had a question niggling in the back of my mind about just that. I thought that the upticks, dropoffs, and flatlines in the trends were a little funny, but I had always chalked it up to the whims of park goers. Case in point, visitation for the National Parks Year-To-Date is up compared to last year, but visitation to the "non-Crown Jewels", overall, is down. I did not realize how much guess work and reuse of old data there was.
Again, I just wanted to point out my perceived problem with the story. To allow for you to defend your position and to reinforce the continued credibilty in your reporting. Again, thank you and keep up the good work.