Park visitor numbers released

The Wyoming Division of State Parks, Historic Sites and Trails released the visitation numbers for this past year for Hot Springs State Park along with all the other parks in the system.

Hot Springs State Park has the highest visitor use of all the parks in the state’s system, garnering over 1.8 million visitors last year. While that is a six percent drop from 2016, it is a two percent increase over the five year average.

Glendo State Park comes in a very distant second with just under 300,000 visitors for the year and Sinks Canyon with just over 210,000 visitors takes the third place spot. System-wide, the 2017 shoulder season, November through April, pushed the overall visitation to Wyoming’s State Parks over the four-million mark.

Not surprisingly, the solar eclipse in August had an impact on visitation with over 100,000 visitors over a three day period to Glendo, Guernsey, Edness Kimball Wilkins and Boysen State Parks.

Traffic counters and manual hand counts at visitor centers, museums and some historic sites were used to collect the data used.

New traffic counters were installed in some areas in 2017, replacing 10-year old equipment. The new TRAFx technology has proved to be extremely accurate.

If you would like to take a closer look at the visitation to the State Parks, please visit http://www.wyoparks.state.wy.us/.