With all signs pointing to more people clamoring to hike Grand Teton National Park’s iconic trails, drink in its majestic views and find parking in its crowded lots, the park’s administration is thinking about how best to approach the future.
And it’s hoping for public feedback to help guide its decisions.
The park is soliciting public input through Aug. 12 on draft desired conditions for the park and specific management areas. The public can learn about the process via a special webpage, or comment here.
There will also be opportunities to learn about it and ask questions at the following meetings:
- In-person: July 16, 4-6 p.m., Teton County Library in Jackson.
- Virtual: July 23, 4-5 p.m., via National Park Service’s Planning, Environment and Public Comment (PEPC) website.
Grand Teton will use the feedback to better understand public perceptions as it weighs how to manage growing visitation and ensure quality experiences. Neither it nor its neighbor Yellowstone has indicated plans to employ drastic management tools like timed entries, ticketed entries or shuttles — which national parks like Yosemite, Zion and Glacier have utilized to try to get a handle on enormous visitation volumes.
Accelerating trends
Grand Teton National Park’s current comment process allows the public to share their visions of the kinds of resource protections, infrastructure and services they would like to see in the park’s various areas. It allows people to comment on specific quadrants — such as road corridors like Teton Park Road; fully developed “frontcountry” points like Colter Bay or the Taggart Lake trailhead; or primitive backcountry areas with trails but few to no services.
Identifying the public’s desires helps officials strategically meet park needs, according to its webpage. That framework also includes management decisions and monitoring. It’s the park’s obligation, via the National Parks and Recreation Act of 1978, to address visitor capacity.
Though only Grand Teton is soliciting input, it’s nearly impossible to disentangle its fate from neighboring park Yellowstone. Managing visitation in both has always been top of mind for park administrators, but growth spurts in recent decades have underscored challenges of what happens when millions of visitors pour in each year.
Visitation was relatively steady for much of the 1990s-2000s, but that began to change in the mid-2010s, fueled by factors such as the 2016 “Find Your Park” campaign, the growth of the outdoor recreation industry and the 2017 solar eclipse. The COVID-19 pandemic further accelerated the trend.
Both parks reported record visitation in 2021 — 4.9 million visits to Yellowstone, and 3.9 million to Grand Teton. Visitations dipped in 2022, the year that historic floods devastated areas in Yellowstone, but bounced back in 2023 to 4.5 million and 3.4 million, respectively.
Though both parks have implemented measures like camping reservations, vehicle limits at crowded lots and a pilot shuttle system, they have yet to adopt more drastic tools like timed-entry systems that Arches and Rocky Mountain National Parks have recently taken on.
However, growth does not appear to be slowing. Yellowstone tallied 522,450 visits in May, up 15% from May 2023 and a 10% increase from May 2021. Grand Teton, meanwhile, tallied 320,603 recreation visits in May, up 20% from May 2023.
In 2023, the U.S. outdoor recreation participant base grew 4.1% to a record 175.8 million participants, according to a 2024 Outdoor Foundation report.
Studies, trials
Grand Teton National Park in 2021 studied traffic patterns, trail-use numbers and visitor experiences, releasing a report the following year. Yellowstone conducted a visitor-use study in 2016. Since then, Yellowstone piloted controlled-visitor access at Norris as well as an automated vehicle shuttle in Canyon Village.
In 2023, superintendents of both parks indicated that traffic patterns and the geography of the parks — both have multiple entrances, giving visitors multiple options on entering and exiting — make transitioning to shuttle systems unlikely.
That summer, Grand Teton park staff asked the general public for input on how they visit the park and what their experiences have been, receiving 446 comments. When asked about challenges, respondents cited finding lodging that isn’t too expensive, the park being too crowded, long lines at entrance stations and not enough parking, according to a 2024 state of the park report.
In a separate effort, Grand Teton National Park in late 2023 launched a master planning process for Colter Bay, which sits on Jackson Lake in the northern part of the park. Colter Bay was originally built in the 1950s but is “increasingly unable to accommodate growing and diverse visitation, changing environmental conditions, and staffing required to maintain and operate this area of the park,” according to related documents.
The park collected public feedback on that process, which will be analyzed per the National Environmental Policy Act.
Please start the conversation about bus only routes through the park picking up visitors at stops going both way every 10 to 20 minutes. Other national parks have done this with great success. Interpretive information on the next stop and what you will find if you choose this location. This is long term I know but what about in 10 years, 20 years? Short term, implement a no stopping and minimum speed limit except in designated pull outs. You just need to watch 399 Queen of the Tetons to know these bears are not living in a natural environment.
Raised in SW Wyoming. Watched the slow but steady increase in visitors from the 50’s thru the 70’s. Observed the NPS contract out all of Grand Teton’s and Yellowstone’s services. Then decades of mismanagement leading up to current issues. The Park Service is going to have to curtail visitation and be willing to stand up to the inevitable criticism. It’s the only solution. One cannot increase either the Park’s amenities or infrastructure without ruining the very reason people want to come. Tough and realistic decisions need to be made. Something that many times seems beyond the scope of the National Park Service. Reducing the amount of visitation to Grand Teton and Yellowstone is the only was to preserve the grandeur of both.
Get rid of tour buses. They are destroying Yellowstone and they will destroy Grand Teton.
👍 agree 💯
Visited Jackson Hole in 2016 , Camped @campground north of town.accomidating 400 + The 400 or so bison that roamed near the campground was a sight to behold , We hiked west of Jenny Lake and injoyed the rushing river flowing out of the Tetons .I would return some day …followed by a trip to old faithful😉
When I lived in Jackson, I was in this park every day. It’s my favorite place on earth. If I had to make reservations, I’d be devastated. It was my home. Out of state tourists should be regulated, locals should be allowed all access and at any time, without restriction. That’s why we live there. Tourists are a problem for those who want to visit our back yard. They should be limited.
EXCELLENT COMMENT!!!!
I am one of those out of state tourists. I have been going to GTNP about every other year for the last 25 years. I can understand locals giving an eye roll, but it’s a NATIONAL park, not a state park. You can’t turn off the tourist spigot. Plus, be careful what you wish for. Tourism provides jobs. But, I certainly understand your annoyance. The last time we went (June 2023), huge crowds and it negatively impacted the experience until we got at least 2 miles up into the trails. Plus, the nature of the crowds included drunken wedding parties screaming at Schwabacher Landing, etc., and just a general loud/rude vibe in the crowded areas that we had never experienced before. GTNP had always been so low key. We are hoping it’s a trend that will abate. Limits and reservations will be required. Just some input from the Sunflower State. Sorry for being part of the invasion.
Parking is a problem, the lot at the Jenny Lake overlook is a bit too small, and packed, but not impossible. Once you’re in the park interior it’s less crowded unlike Yellowstone where it’s just ridiculous. GTNP is my favorite park, it’s not as popular as Yellowstone because it’s more about hiking and the views of the Tetons and a little more challenging because you have to get out of the car and take short walks for the best views other than parking, there’s no problem going here but it’s no place for strollers and wheelchairs. It’s stunning and worth it regardless.
The parks are beautiful but are getting too crowded which is a good thing and a sad thing. Limits should be set on vehicles and timed entry is becoming a necessity.
Tickets for entry to our National Parks is a brilliant idea. I support this action. Too bad we now have to do this.
Locals should have priority of entry into GTNP, our own backyard, regardless of the crowd size. Like JHMR or the Inca Trail of Machu Picchu, perhaps a maximum number of visitors allowed not to be exceeded on any given day.
Making park day reservations is a wonderful and easy way to have visitors plan their trips ahead of time with no hassle. While this is great, locals should have access to parks at any given time (I lived 10 min from the entrance) and if i had to make a reservation it would be inconvenient.
They should limit tourists. We live in Wyoming because we love it here.