How Crowded Is Yellowstone? Nearly 1 Million People Visited in July

If you’re looking for peace and quiet in the great outdoors, the big names in the National Park Service may not be the place to be.

They continue to draw huge crowds in the summer, making them sometimes feel like an urban excursion complete with traffic jams. Take Yellowstone National Park, for example.

The crown jewel of the National Park system welcomed 969,692 recreational visitors in July 2023, according to a press release from the NPS. That’s the equivalent of the entire city of Austin, Texas, visiting in a single month.

The NPS said this was a 63% increase from July 2022 (with 596,562 recreational visitors) and a 4% increase from July 2019 (with 936,062 recreational visitors).

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So far in 2023, through July, Yellowstone has welcomed 2,463,202 recreational visitors. That’s up 33% from the same period in 2022 (with 1,855,396 recreational visitors) and a 7% increase from 2019 (with 2,294,691 recreational visitors).

The NPS said Yellowstone attendance was down in 2022 due to early summer flooding. And 2019 is often used as the benchmark for comparing attendance figures, since it was the last year before the pandemic disrupted travel in the United States and around the world.

Less Crowded Parks
If you want more space, you have a few options.

One alternative is to head to the least visited national parks. True, some of them are very isolated (looking at you, Alaska and American Samoa). But others are closer to population centers, like Congaree National Park in South Carolina, and they’re relatively unexplored compared to the big names.

You’ll also likely enjoy state parks, national forests, national wildlife refuges, and the like, which have many of the same stunning features as their more famous cousins. However, some of these places are also more crowded, so it’s a good idea to check in advance for the specific place you want to visit.