Glacier caps record year with 2,366,056 visitors

Glacier National Park welcomed 2,366,056 visitors in 2015, breaking its all-time attendance record for the second year in a row.

Despite a historic fire season that filled the sky with smoke and forced temporary closures of roads and hiking areas last summer, high attendance early in the season bolstered overall visitation.

Recreational visitation was 1.8 percent higher than in 2014, when an estimated 2,324,593 visitors streamed through the gates.

The National Park Service estimates visitation by multiplying the number of vehicles entering Glacier by the average number of occupants per car. Glacier’s 2015 year-end numbers were released on Friday.

Glacier already had set its yearly record after 11 months, with December adding another 13,357 to the total — a 17.5 percent increase over the previous December.

After January, more visitors entered the park than in 2014 for each of the next six months.

The park received more than 2 million visitors in just four months — the all-important tourism season stretching from June through September.

That included the park’s busiest June on record, during which 414,671 visitors put year-to-date attendance more than 25 percent ahead of 2014 by July.

July 2015 slightly edged out the year before, even after the Reynolds Creek Fire scorched 4,850 acres on the park’s east side and partially shut down Going-to-the-Sun Road for more than two weeks.

August visitation was down 14.2 percent from the previous year, as Western Montana became socked in by smoke from wildfires throughout the Northwest. The nearly 22,000-acre Thompson Fire also triggered the closure of hiking trails and campgrounds in the south-central portion of Glacier, but didn’t directly impact the popular Sun Road.

September and October were slightly below the attendance levels in 2014 as well, before closing out the year with a 21.4 percent visitation increase in the final two months compared with 2014.

Polebridge had the biggest single jump in visitation of all the park’s entrances, posting a 25.8 percent increase with 75,184 people passing through the remote entrance station.

West Glacier had more than 1.1 million visitors, edging out last year and the year before. It’s the third straight year the gateway town has passed the 1 million mark.

The St. Mary entrance station, which was most affected by fire and smoke, tallied 11 percent fewer visitors than 2014. A total of 429,942 people entered the park at St. Mary last year compared to 484,529 a year earlier.

For 2015, total overnight stays in Glacier totaled 354,215, down 2.8 percent from 2014.

Tent overnight stays were up 2.7 percent and backcountry overnight stays increased 9.8 percent last year.

Concession lodging was down 9.5 percent and recreational-vehicle overnight stays declined 4.3 percent.

Glacier hit another milestone last year, welcoming its 100 millionth visitor since it became a national park in 1910.

The park’s big year was not an isolated event. The National Park System is on pace to set an overall attendance record, with more than 300 million total visits expected once the numbers are finalized.

Yellowstone National Park had already shattered its attendance record by the end of September, later reaching the 4 million mark for the first time.

And with the National Park Service expecting continued increasing attendance as it celebrates its centennial this year, many of those records could be short-lived.

Reporter Sam Wilson can be reached at 758-4407 or by email at swilson@dailyinterlake.com.