Yellowstone Superintendent Prepares for Even More Crowds
CODY, Wyo. (AP) — The superintendent of Yellowstone National Park says he expects visitor numbers to continue to grow but that he's gotten better at managing the crowds.
The Cody Enterprise reports that the park is coming off two straight years of record attendance and Superintendent Dan Wenk does not believe it has peaked yet. Yellowstone saw 4,097,711 visitors in 2015 and had topped that number by October this year, when it reached 4,221,782.
Wenk says the 2016 numbers might have been even higher if it wasn't for early snow and a busy fire season that closed the South Gate for a time in August. Yellowstone opened in 1872 and is the country's oldest national park. Wenk says it was overcrowded by fans in summer 2015, but that staff has learned from that experience.