2021 was Glacier's second busiest year

Despite December visitation numbers being down 37% from a year ago, Glacier National Park finished 2021 with the second highest visitation on record, according to preliminary statistics released by the National Park Service on Monday.

December saw 17,629 visitors enter the park, down from 28,196 a year ago, but enough to push the 2021 total to 3,089,642, trailing only 2017’s all-time record of 3,305,512.

There was speculation that last year could wind up as the most crowded ever for the park after record visitation in September and October, but the last two months of the year were down from previous seasons.

The 2021 numbers could be somewhat skewed, though, as the park says it turned away approximately 300,000 visitors as Glacier required a ticket for motorists to enter the Going-to-the-Sun Road corridor from 6 a.m. to 5 p.m. from Memorial Day weekend through Labor day weekend.

While many of those turned away found their way to other areas of the park such as Two Medicine or Polebridge, which also saw closures due to the lack of parking and capacity, the number of visitors turned away who did not enter the park elsewhere is nearly impossible to calculate.

“The ticketed entry pilot program allowed us to disperse the visitation throughout the day. It didn’t cause a drop in visitation, but it helped us manage numbers during the peak times of the day and spread the crowds out to provide a more positive experience for visitors,” park spokeswoman Gina Kerzman said.

The Two Medicine area of the park saw 246,385 visitors in 2021, setting a new record, while the west entrance also set a new record with 1,555,111 visitors entering the park there.

“That’s partly because of ticketed entry. Two Medicine was one of the entrances that didn’t require a ticket or reservation, so a lot more people were visiting there this year than typically would in the past,” Kerzman said. “The majority of people who were accessing tickets last year were coming through the west entrance, so we saw an increase there and a drop at St. Mary, especially during the hiker/biker portion of our year.”

Only 493,960 visitors used the St. Mary entrance in 2021, down from 617,440 in 2019 and 906,862 in the record year of 2017. The St. Mary entrance was closed for nearly all of 2020.

With the Rising Sun and St. Mary campgrounds closed in 2021, the park saw 166,406 overnight stays in its campgrounds last year, down from 249,279 in 2019. With concessioner lodging stays also down just over 65,000 in 2021, total overnight stays in the park (258,961) was down more than 140,000 from 2019.

Complete park statistics are available at irma.nps.gov/STATS/Reports/Park/GLAC.