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Yellowstone National Park Website Tracks Campground Filling Times In Real Time

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By NPT Staff - July 18th, 2015
Yellowstone National Park campgrounds/NPS

With a real time tracking system up and running, a glance at Yellowstone National Park's website will let you know if there are any campsites available in the park's 12 campgrounds/NPS

If you don't have a reservation for a campsite at Yellowstone National Park, you walk up with fingers crossed hoping there's a vacant site. But you will have to get up early to be successful, according to the park's website.

Thanks to a recent update, Yellowstone's camping pages now keep track -- in real time -- of when specific campgrounds reach their capacity. For instance, a recent day showed that the Bridge Bay Campground had filled at 6:46 a.m., while the Canyon Campground filled at 6:57 a.m.

Of the park's 12 campgrounds, just one Lewis Campground, hadn't filled by mid-afternoon.

Comments

Submitted by LaRae Taylor on July 19, 2015 - 10:20pm.

Several campers told me that Mammoth would put out the filled sign by about 10:00 am whether they were or not! A lot of days they weren't full.


Submitted by CJDillon on July 20, 2015 - 5:08pm.

This is a great service. Unfortunately for park visitors, there is little to know internet availability in Yellowstone, so visitors would not have access to this website once they arrive at the park.


Submitted by Anonymous on July 20, 2015 - 8:18pm.

I was there two weeks ago and found the service spotty but it wasn't hard to find a place where it worked.


Submitted by SmokiesBackpacker on July 21, 2015 - 1:26pm.

Last week in the Great Smoky Mtns NP, the widely despised and highly contested online reservation system for backcountry camping was down for 24 hours. Calls to the backcountry office were met with the following statement, of whom I was one of the callers. "We have no way to provide any reservation information or give you a permit because it is all computerized." So the NPS has no way to print off reservations each day to back up the system. As a result, no permits were issued that day.
How's that for govt inefficiency and locking people out of the Smokies on a weekend? 100% of the fee monies for backcountry camping went to fund a reservation system and this is what we got.
Thanks NPS for replacing a self registration, non computer system for empty campsites, with this garbage. Then again, Jarvis brother is probably lobbying on behalf of the software company now.


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