If Yellowstone National Park felt more crowded than usual this year, it wasn’t just your imagination. According to numbers released by the National Park Service last week, the park has already logged the most visits in its 150-year history — and there are still a few more months to go in 2021.

By the end of September, Yellowstone had already hosted 4,472,982 recreational visits — up 32% from the same point last year, when COVID-19 led to a delayed opening. The figures have already surpassed the roughly 4.25 million visits that were recorded in all of 2016, the prior high-water mark. It’s not particularly close, either: Through the first nine months of 2021, the total number of visits is up more than 12% over the previous record year.

“Never in Yellowstone’s history have we seen such substantial visitation increases in such a short amount of time,” said Yellowstone Superintendent Cam Sholly. “We will continue working with our teams and partners to develop and implement appropriate short- and long-term actions for managing increasing visitation across the park.”

Park leaders noted that Yellowstone’s road corridors and parking areas equate to only about 0.079% of the park’s 2.2 million acres and that most visitors stay within a half-mile of these corridors.  

Park officials say they monitor and respond to the impacts that the increasing number of visitors is having on Yellowstone’s natural resources; staffing, infrastructure and operations; visitor experience; and gateway communities. Currently, Yellowstone leaders are focusing their efforts on the park’s most congested areas, including Old Faithful, Midway Geyser Basin, Norris, Canyon rims, and Lamar Valley.

The National Park Service piloted an autonomous vehicle shuttle system this year that moved more than 10,000 visitors at Canyon Village, testing technology “that could be used in the future.”

“A major shuttle feasibility study is underway to analyze the viability of a shuttle system in the Midway Geyser Basin corridor,” the Park Service added.

The park is using data from recent major visitor surveys and transportation studies and working closely with Grand Teton National Park, since both parks generally share visitation trends each year.

Yellowstone officials say they’ve completed over $100 million worth of projects over the past two years to improve transportation infrastructure, reduce traffic congestion and enhance visitor experiences.

“Substantial additional investments will continue in 2022 and 2023 in multiple areas of the park as part of funding received from the Great American Outdoors Act,” the Park Service said.

In his statement on the record visitation, Sholly thanked the park’s teams for their work, “especially with the continued workforce challenges presented by COVID-19.”