Montana State Parks sets visitation record

Montana State Parks set a fourth consecutive visitation record in 2016, with Flathead Lake State Park retaining the No. 2 spot after 313,033 people visited its six park sites last year.

According to the state agency’s annual report, 2.56 million people visited Montana’s 55 state parks last year — a 7 percent increase over the record set in 2015. All but two months in 2015 saw visitation in excess of the previous year.

“It’s interesting that we saw that jump, given the summer that we had,” said Dave Landstrom, the state parks manager for Northwest Montana. “If you recall, the weather was not as hot and dry as the previous summer, so I wasn’t expecting to see a big increase in visitation like we did.”

Landstrom pointed to several factors likely driving the visitation spike: an overall rebound in the economy, historically low gas prices and changing demographics throughout the country.

“There’s more people out there with more time, and I think they’re interested in being outdoors ... regardless of what the weather is doing,” he said.

Northwest Montana’s state parks saw a 9 percent bump in popularity compared with last year. The 705,703 visitors recorded in the region was second to North-Central Montana, which reported about 20,000 more visits despite its numbers dropping slightly from 2015.

Flathead Lake’s visitation was again second to Giant Springs State Park in Great Falls, but drew closer to the top spot with an 11 percent bump in popularity. Wayfarers State Park, included within Flathead Lake, would alone have been the third most-visited state park with more than 150,000 visits last year.

The Thompson Chain of Lakes took fifth place with 137,507 visits, an increase of 9 percent over the previous year. Lone Pine and Whitefish Lake/Les Mason state parks also saw crowds exceeding 100,000 last year, and Lone Pine recorded a nearly 20 percent increase.

Landstrom said some of the crowds in Northwest Montana likely owed to the unprecedented influx of visitors to Glacier National Park this summer. While final numbers are not yet available for Glacier, more than 2.9 million people entered the park during the first 11 months of 2016, obliterating the all-time record set in 2015 by 24 percent.

In Wayfarers, he said the popular state park’s capacity became overwhelmed several times throughout the peak season. On 13 occasions, park staff were forced to hold up incoming traffic until visitors left, a trend he said that has only begun within the past several years.

“When it’s full to the point you can’t get an ambulance in, for example, that’s when it’s really not safe,” Landstrom said. “There is just this huge, huge demand that we’re going to have to come to grips with to meet those front-country needs.”

The report also noted a substantial increase in shoulder-season visitation, covering the months of February, March, April, October and November. Last year’s shoulder season brought 22 percent more visits than in 2015, and 77 percent more than 2012.

While last year’s numbers were up substantially, the final tally fell short of projections mid-way through the year. In its July report, the agency stated that visitation had increased by a whopping 23 percent.

But despite the agency’s struggles to meet the ever-growing demand with sufficient staff, infrastructure and other resources, Landstrom said there were several positives to emerge from the past season. For one, he said the first-in-the-state additions of bike-camping spots to Wayfarers and Whitefish Lake state parks proved overwhelmingly popular.

“We saw lots of people enjoying those and using those, from all over the world,” he said. “Those are some of those creative solutions that we’re pretty excited about pursuing in the future.”

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