Glacier Park visitation declined in 2022
A red jammer bus passes Triple Arches on the Going to the Sun Road in Glacier National Park. (Jeremy Weber/Daily Inter Lake)
Glacier National Park saw its lowest number of visitors since 2015 last year, not counting the pandemic year of 2020.
According to numbers released by the National Park Service, Glacier saw 2,908,458 total visitors in 2022, down from 3,081,656 in 2021.
The West Entrance saw a drop of nearly 185,000 from last year’s numbers, with the Going to the Sun Road reservation system operating in its second year in addition to nightly construction closures. Snow removal operations on the Sun Road were also a likely factor in the reduced visitation numbers, with the road not opening in its entirety until July 13.
Visits to Many Glacier were down nearly 45,000 in 2022, Camas was down 30,000 and the Two Medicine area saw more than 19,000 fewer visits.
Not all areas in the park were down, though, as the St. Mary entrance saw an increase of 40,000 visitors last year, while the Polebridge entrance station was up 40,000.