Glacier Park Clocks Second-busiest Year on Record
More than 3.2 million people came to Glacier National Park in 2024, reflecting a pattern of broader shoulder seasons that stretched the 2024 visitation season later into the calendar year
When last year’s run of spectacular late-summer weather stretched into fall, the crowds continued passing through Glacier National Park’s entrance stations in record numbers, reversing a trend of relative quiet that usually comes after Labor Day. Then a durable Going-to-the-Sun Road season afforded motorists snow-free access to Logan Pass until late October, with 3.17 million people visiting during the first 10 months of 2024.
Although visitation fell just short of hitting a new record in November, it surged again in December, rounding out the year with nearly 20,000 visits.
Last week, the park released its year-end estimates for 2024, revealing they’d surpassed the 3.2-million mark (3,211,813) for only the second time in Glacier’s 108-year history, representing a 9.4% increase over 2023 (2,936,260) and shoring up the theory that, when the weather allows it, people are coming to Glacier earlier in the year and extending their visits beyond the traditional summertime terminus.
“Our shoulder seasons are definitely picking up,” Gina Icenoggle, the park’s public information officer, said last week. “Of course, much of that depends on forces outside our control. If we have a nice spring, you see an increase in visitation. If we have a nice fall, and the weather cooperates, we see a lot more people. But we are seeing a pattern.”
Acknowledging that weather-related variables will always remain a wild-card factor, the park’s management team has been working to distribute motorists more evenly across Glacier’s entry points to ease congestion during the height of summer, a goal they’ve accomplished with varying degrees of success by launching a vehicle reservation requirement. The evolving pilot program completed its fifth consecutive season last year, when administrators described locating “a sweet spot” they hope to refine again in 2025 before completing their Visitor Use Management Plan in 2026 and finalizing the vehicle-reservation system in time for the 2027 visitor season.
According to their tentative planning timeline, park officials could start conducting analysis under the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) in the spring and summer of 2025. A public review of the plan’s environmental assessment would follow in the summer and fall, with the final plan announced in late winter of 2026.
“We will be releasing the details of the plan in 2026, but not early enough in the year to be able to announce it and implement it in time for the 2026 season,” Icenoggle said. “We like to announce the plan early enough that it gives visitors time for planning. We announced the details of the 2025 pilot program back in November because of the changes.”
The most prominent changes to this year’s vehicle-reservation system revolve around a timed-entry vehicle reservation system. So far, that pilot program has included four phases of an adaptive reservation system, which park officials say has allowed them to test methods in each of the park’s three distinct valleys as well as along the Going-to-the-Sun Road corridor connecting the west entrance and St. Mary over Logan Pass. Although the Sun Road corridor is by far the most popular visitor destination, as well as the most problematic given its logistical constraints, Glacier’s 1-million-acre footprint consists of entry portals that are served by geographically disconnected road systems, requiring a nuanced management plan tailored to each of those districts and their unique characteristics.
“All these places in the park are distinct,” Glacier Park Superintendent Dave Roemer said last November during a public engagement session. Describing the level of commercial development and ease of access that distinguishes the bustling hub of shops and sites at Apgar Village from the unpaved, off-the-grid North Fork, Roemer said the pilot program’s adaptive approach has been useful due to the wide range of visitor experience that Glacier provides.
“They have their own special qualities, and the goal is never to make all parts of the park as developed as Apgar or Lake McDonald Lodge,” he said. “Each valley has something unique and it’s our mission to preserve the distinct values and the character of those unique areas of Glacier.”
Over the past two decades, annual visitation at Glacier National Park has increased from approximately 1.5 million to over 3 million visitors, most of them concentrated along the Going-to-the-Sun Road corridor and other front-country destinations during the peak season of June through September, creating severe congestion at the park’s most popular entrances.
The reservation requirement has existed during the summer months in some form or another since 2021. This year, it expired on Sept. 10, while the entire length of the Sun Road remained open another five weeks, when a season-ending weather event never materialized.
Even with the winter closure of the Sun Road in place, visitors may still drive 10 miles along the Going-to-the-Sun Road from the West Entrance to Lake McDonald Lodge, and six miles from the St. Mary Entrance to Rising Sun. Hiker, biker and skier access is also permitted past the vehicle closures as far as the closure signs indicate for road crew activity and road conditions.