Glacier Park Closes Out 2025 as Third-busiest Year on Record

An estimated 3,136,931 visitors passed through Glacier National Park’s entrance gates in 2025, according to newly released end-of-year visitation statistics. The year-end totals signal a 2.33% dip compared to 2024 totals, when Glacier recorded its second-busiest year on record.

Despite the slight downturn, the preliminary totals for 2025 mark the second consecutive year the park has surpassed 3 million visitors, and the fifth time in Glacier’s 115-year history that visitation has broken that barrier. It will go down as the third-busiest year on record.

A decade ago, during the National Park Service’s 2016 centennial celebration, visitation to Glacier nearly exceeded 3 million visitors for the first time, but fell just short with 2,962,504 people. The following year, visitation shot past a threshold once thought to be shatterproof when 3,305,512 people set what remains the all-time record. In 2024, 3,208,755 people came to Glacier during its second-busiest year, while the National Park Service surpassed its previous record across all units with approximately 331.9 million recreation visits, breaking the previous record from the 2016 centennial and signaling a 2% increase over 2023.

For the past decade, year-end visitation has brushed up against or exceeded the 3 million mark every calendar year with one exception: 2020, when Glacier closed its entrances in March due to the Covid-19 pandemic. Although visitation to the park resumed on the west side by mid-summer, eastern entrances adjoining the Blackfeet Nation remained shuttered due to tribal health concerns while other restrictions hampered visitation. That year, Glacier recorded just 1,698,864 visitors.

But the park’s swings in visitation more often mirror the extent to which the Going-to-the-Sun Road is open. 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.

As the once unimaginable volume of visitation becomes the new normal, park administrators have grappled with its challenges by managing access through a vehicle reservation system.

Officials say the park’s vehicle reservation system has helped modulate visitation during the busy summer months, when congestion intensifies, alleviating spikes in visitation during the day.

The evolving pilot program completed its fifth consecutive season in 2025.

But even though administrators previously said they believe they’d located “a sweet spot” after consecutive years of trial and error, and were on pace to complete a Visitor Use Management Plan in 2026 while formalizing the vehicle-reservation system’s final implementation in time for the 2027 visitor season, recent reports suggest they are considering shelving the program next summer.

Although park officials still have not provided details about the divisive program’s fate next summer, and did not respond to requests for comment in time for this article’s publication, reports of its suspension spread quickly last month, prompting an outpouring of social media posts.

“Ending the rationing of access to Glacier National Park via vehicle reservation system is a great thing for locals and anyone who wants to visit the park,” according to a social media post from U.S. Rep. Ryan Zinke, R-Mont., a sharp critic of the program. “This will increase access, letting visitors drive the Going-to-the-Sun Road with more flexibility, and will bring much needed improvements to the shuttle system. More Montanans and travelers will now have the freedom to enjoy Glacier’s beauty without restrictive reservations, which will also benefit the gateway businesses that rely on tourism for their livelihood.”

First reported by the Daily Inter Lake, the news that Glacier was suspending its reservation system in 2026 apparently slipped out in early December during a presentation by Glacier Park Superintendent Dave Roemer to the Columbia Falls Chamber of Commerce. However, a park spokesperson did not confirm whether the park was suspending its reservation requirement next year, writing in an email that “we will update the public once a decision for the 2026 season has been made.”

Park officials previously said that a 2026 summer pilot system was all but certain. However, the past year has delivered numerous administrative challenges as the Trump administration worked to reduce the federal workforce, creating a climate of uncertainty throughout the National Park Service.

“The National Park Service continuously reviews Glacier National Park’s pilot operation programs to determine adjustments for the following year,” a spokesperson wrote in an email to the Beacon. “Visitor use data, gate counts, congestion monitoring, traffic operations, and feedback from the public and gateway communities help inform strategies the park uses to manage congestion, shuttles, parking, and visitor access.”

Meanwhile, the release of visitor-tracking data was delayed this year due to the effects of the government shutdown, which spanned 43 days and included all of October. Although Glacier Park remained open during the shutdown, its staff was furloughed and services retrenched, which likely impacted visitation. The 127,537 visitors to Glacier in October represented a nearly 23% drop compared to that same month last year, when 165,018 people visited the park.

[email protected]