Grand Teton Stays Busy, Yellowstone Slows A Bit

Above, Mitch Geriminsky and I at Grand Teton National Park last July.

Even though the two national parks are only 30 miles apart from each other, there is a big difference in tourist visit numbers between Grand Teton National Park and Yellowstone National Park.

2019 was a good year for Grand Teton in attendance while the numbers dipped a bit for Yellowstone.

I visited Grand Teton National Park last July, which is the busiest month for the park.

Above, the Grand Teton range is reflected on Jackson Lake. Photo by Armand Vaquer.

The Jackson Hole News & Guide Reported:

Grand Teton National Park stayed near its highest-ever visitation levels in 2019, trailing only 2018 for numbers of tourists passing through. 

That’s a trend that somewhat bucks that of its National Park Service sibling to the north, Yellowstone National Park, which had its slowest tourism year since 2014. 

Teton park’s spokeswoman chalks up the continued busy times to more people coming during the historically slow shoulder seasons.

“I don’t know what to make of the difference between the two parks,” Denise Germann said, “but I do believe our shoulder seasons are expanding a little bit. In 2019, we saw record visitation in both March and August.” 

For the year, Grand Teton National Park attracted 3.41 million “recreational visitors” — a category that excludes some passers-through, such as commercial truckers on Highway 26/89/191. 

July, as is the custom, was the busiest month of the year, with 776,000 visitors. The nadir fell in February, followed by November and December — months that attracted fewer than 50,000 recreational visits each. 

While the flow of Yellowstone tourists has fallen off slightly more, the declines have been marginal. The world’s first national park attracted a touch over 4 million recreational visitors last year, a 2.3% slip since 2018 and 5.6% down from 2016, when the National Park Service saw an all-time peak during its centennial year.

To read more, go here.