Park Trail GuideTrip planning

Reviewed guide · Rocky Mountain

Yellowstone National Park

Unit code YELL. Figures retrieved 2026-11-06. Official alerts, fees, and closures are not copied here.

Show on the atlas
Looking through a deep canyon full of orange and pink colors.
Public-domain National Park Service photograph. Credit: NPS/Diane Renkin. Asset record.
States on the system list
Idaho, Montana, Wyoming
Guide region
Rocky Mountain. Editorial grouping of the state that contains the centroid, or the first listed state when the point is offshore.
Anniversary-table date
March 1, 1872
Gross area acres
2,219,790.71

NPS fee acres: 2,219,789.13. Report date September 30, 2026. Gross area is not the same column as fee ownership.

Boundary centroid
44.5830, -110.4901

Containing shoreline polygon: Wyoming. Not an entrance.

Recreation-visit record
Highest monthly mean is in June, July, or August

Highest mean: July. Lowest mean: November. Mean annual total across complete years: 4,247,450 (10 complete years).

The monthly record

January: 35,921 mean recreation visitsFebruary: 39,973 mean recreation visitsMarch: 29,817 mean recreation visitsApril: 55,768 mean recreation visitsMay: 433,230 mean recreation visitsJune: 796,284 mean recreation visitsJuly: 940,507 mean recreation visitsAugust: 837,365 mean recreation visitsSeptember: 757,664 mean recreation visitsOctober: 271,564 mean recreation visitsNovember: 20,782 mean recreation visitsDecember: 28,575 mean recreation visitsJFMAMJJASOND
Mean of reported recreation visits by calendar month, 2016–2025. Gold is the lowest mean and rust is the highest. A missing bar was not reported. This is a historic average, not a live crowd count.
Monthly recreation-visit record
MonthMeanLowest yearHighest yearYears in the mean
January35,92125,23446,61510
February39,97331,65049,29110
March29,81722,74135,61110
April55,768080,28310
May433,23046,219566,36310
June796,284525,363938,84510
July940,507596,5621,080,76710
August837,365582,211921,84410
September757,664567,587882,07810
October271,564171,339359,88910
November20,78210,46833,14410
December28,57519,68537,74910

How to use this guide

Yellowstone is listed in Idaho, Montana, and Wyoming. The boundary centroid used here falls in Wyoming, inside the Natural Earth state polygon, even though the boundary service’s single state field says ID. The dot is the centroid of the administrative boundary. It is not a gate, a geyser, or Old Faithful.

The anniversary table dates the park to March 1, 1872, without a renaming note. The visitation record is deeply seasonal, and dropping 2020 does not change the fact that entries concentrate in summer. None of that tells you whether a road is open in October. Compare Yellowstone with another park by the published facts and by the straight-line gap between centroids, then build the actual route from the official directions pages.

Official pages

These links were checked when the site was built. A working link is not a live feed. If a standard address did not respond, it is omitted.

Nearest other national parks

Distances are great-circle miles between boundary centroids. They are not road distances or travel times.