If you visited Glacier National Park in 2022, you certainly weren't alone. You were about one in nearly three million, as the park ranked in the top 10 most visited parks in 2022, hosting 2,908,458 recreation visits.
The highest on record was in 2017, when 3,305,512 guests visited the park.
GNP public information officer Gina Kerzman says they are expecting another busy summer. Four of the last five years have had at least 2.9 million guests and this year could surpass that.
Visitation to Glacier National Park
- 2022- 2,908,458
- 2021- 3,081,656
- 2020- 1,698,864 (Park closed March 24 to June 8, east side of the park remained closed)
- 2019- 3,049,839
- 2018- 2,965,309
- 2017- 3,305,512 (Highest on record)
"We expect it to be right up there, around 3 million visitors. We continue to have a steady flow of visitors coming into the park, which makes managing the vehicle capacity more and more important. We have more people and more cars than we have places to put them," Kerzman said.
"We just have more and more people that are being exposed to the outdoors that want to participate in the outdoors and Glacier is a great place to come for that."
2022 had about 5% less visitation than 2021, but despite that, Kerzman says 2021 is the 2nd best year on record, with 3,081,656 logged visitors that year.
"It could be a number of reasons why it was down, but 5% less than your second best year is minimal," Kerzman said. "Fuel was expensive last year, we had lots of wet weather in the springtime. Even with those, it was another busy year with lots of visitation all through spring, summer, and fall, and we're expecting it to be that way this year."
Kerzman added that there will be construction in the park up until about mid-May. That project is ongoing work through Going to the Sun Road. She also said that to help spread out visitation, guests can come to the park without a reservation before 6 am or after 3 pm. She said For the east side of the park, you can enter without a pass up until July 1. The west side will require reservations starting May 26.
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