Bryce Canyon visitation by year.

Bryce Canyon by the year.

Each row is the park's total recreation visits for that calendar year, drawn from the official NPS Visitor Use Statistics Data Package, 2025 (Statistic = TRV, summed from monthly to annual). The full 1979-2025 history is shown: 47 years. Bar widths are proportional to the all-time peak; the orange bar marks the peak year and the teal bar marks the lowest year in the full window.

What the trend says

Bryce Canyon's annual recreation visits over the full 1979-2025 dataset trace a steady climb across decades punctuated by one decisive 2010s breakout. The dataset begins in 1979 at roughly 558,000 visits, with the dataset trough at 472,000 in 1982; the only year in the full 47-year series below 500,000. The 1980s ran in the 470,000-to-740,000 range with a decade mean near 588,000, and visits crossed 1 million for the first time in 1990. The 1990s pushed steadily higher into the 1.0-to-1.2 million band, with a decade mean near 1.06 million. The 2000s held a remarkably stable 0.9-to-1.1 million range, with the decade mean near 1.01 million, the only decade in the dataset where the park actually moved slightly downward from the prior decade.

The 2010s broke that pattern decisively. Visits crossed 1.5 million in 2014, 2.0 million in 2016 with the NPS Centennial, and reached the all-time peak of 2.68 million in 2018: the high water mark in the full dataset. 2019 held at 2.59 million. The 2010s decade mean was 1.87 million, nearly double the 2000s. The 2020 pandemic year fell to 1.46 million as NPS operated under reduced capacity, the deepest single-year drop since the 1990s.

Recovery from the pandemic was steady. 2021 climbed back to 2.10 million, 2022 to 2.35 million, 2023 to 2.46 million, and 2024 to 2.50 million; the highest reading since the 2018 record. 2025 stepped back sharply to 1.97 million. The 47-year mean is roughly 1.25 million; 2025 sits about 720,000 visits above that long-term mean but well below the 2018 record. Read across the full window, the structural story is a slow 1980s-2000s climb from the dataset trough into a 1-million plateau, a 2010s breakout to the 2.5-million-plus range driven by broader social-media discovery of the hoodoo amphitheater and the NPS Centennial effect, and a 2020s consolidation in the 2.0-to-2.5 million band. Year-to-year movement on top of the modern plateau is driven primarily by visitor behavior at the high-elevation rim (8,000-9,000 ft) and the short winter access window rather than by major operational disruptions. For seasonal shape (when within the year these visits actually land) see the per-park month-by-month curve on the best-time-to-visit page.

Methodology

Annual recreation visits come from the official NPS Visitor Use Statistics Data Package, 2025 on NPS IRMA Stats. The statistic shown is Recreation Visits, the NPS visitor-count category that excludes Tent Campers, Backcountry Campers, and Recreation Visit Hours. Annual totals are computed by summing the twelve monthly TRV (Total Recreation Visits) values for each year. The window displayed here is the full 1979-2025 history available in the NPS dataset. Independent site, not affiliated with the National Park Service.