Yellowstone National Park in 2019 logged its lowest number of visitors since 2014, but we're still talking about four million people.

The park released the visitation totals on Wednesday, noting last year's number was a 2.3% decrease from 2018 and a 5.6% decrease from the record-breaking year of 2016, which marked the centennial of the National Park Service.

Park spokeswoman Linda Veress said the centennial may explain that record year of 4,257,177 visitors because of the publicity and celebrations. The numbers have declined slightly over the years after that.

In 2019, the park had some road closures due to weather especially in February, September and October, so that may have discouraged potential visitors, Veress said.

However, no hard data exists to determine why fewer people went to Yellowstone, she said.

These are the visitation numbers since 2014:

  • 2019 – 4,020,287.
  • 2018 – 4,114,999.
  • 2017 – 4,116,525.
  • 2016 – 4,257,177.
  • 2015 – 4,097,710.
  • 2014 – 3,513,486.

Meanwhile, Yellowstone is open for winter visitors, although Veress cautioned some areas in the southern part of the park have received about 80 inches of snow in the past week.

More data on park visitation and the calculation of these numbers is available on the NPS Stats website.

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