Yellowstone National Park is seeing a dip in visitors this summer due to the coronavirus pandemic.
For the week of June 11-16, the park saw 39,361 vehicles come through, 13,092 through the Wyoming entrances and 26,269 through the Montana ones.
This was a drop compared to 2019, when the park saw 52,320 vehicles over the same week.
Tourism is vitally important to local economies in the area. A new National Park Service (NPS) report shows that 4 million people to Yellowstone in 2019 spent $507 million in communities near the park.
That spending supported 7,000 jobs in the local area and had a cumulative benefit to the local economy of $642 million.
“The positive economic impacts of Yellowstone are essential to economies of Wyoming, Montana, and Idaho,” Yellowstone Superintendent Cam Sholly said. “It is important that we continue working with our state and local partners to balance the many benefits of tourism with our continued efforts to protect the world-class resources within the park.”
