Rocky Mountain National Park is one of the busiest national parks; third in the country in 2019, with over 4.6 million visitors. This represents a 42 percent increase in visitation in seven years, since 2012. Rapid growth in day use visitation and changing use patterns in the park have degraded natural and cultural resources, diminished quality of the visitor experience, increased negative impacts to visitor and staff safety and created a heavy strain on the park’s facilities and ability to perform daily operations.
Rocky Mountain National Park Banner
In response to these negative impacts, the park has piloted various visitor use management strategies over the last six years. From 2016-2019, this included managing vehicle access to first come, first served visitors in the highly congested areas of the Bear Lake Road corridor, the Alpine Visitor Center parking area and the Wild Basin area of the park. This strategy had some limited success initially, but over time began to lose effectiveness; the length of time they were necessary kept expanding and impacts were pushed elsewhere in the park.
Park-wide timed entry permit reservation systems were piloted in 2020-2021, and the park will be piloting a similar system again in 2022. Park staff continue to learn from these various pilots which are helping to inform long-range day use visitor access strategies. This includes developing desired conditions, defining zones, and identifying indicators, thresholds, strategies, and capacities.
Public comments were invited for over sixty in 2021. During the review period, 571 correspondences were submitted to the NPS. Park staff are eager to continue engaging park stakeholders and park visitors near and far to help identify shared values, clarify key issues, and develop potential management strategies to help the park prepare for long-term day use management.
If would like more information about Rocky Mountain National Park, please visit www.nps.gov/romo or call the park’s Information Office at (970) 586-1206.