State Parks in Montana see huge increase in visitors

Click here for updates on this story

    Missoula, MT (Missoulian) — If it felt like state parks such as Milltown, Placid Lake and Frenchtown Pond were unusually crowded this summer, you weren’t imagining things.

The 10 state parks in the Missoula-headquartered Montana Fish, Wildlife & Parks Region 2 saw a combined 421,000 visitors through September of this year, compared to 288,000 in the same time period last year. That’s a 46.2% increase, the highest jump of any of the regions in the Montana State Parks system.

“Those are just insane numbers,” explained Loren Flynn, the FWP regional park manager. “We’ve never seen anything like that. We have 10 parks in our region, and every park saw an increase. I was really proud of our staff that did their best to provide service given the crazy circumstances.”

Nearly 66,000 people visited Milltown State Park this summer, a 105% increase over last year. And 20,000 of those visitors came in July alone.

“And that’s not even counting our overlook, which had a lot of visitors as well,” said park manager Mike Kustudia. He noted that a decision by the Missoula County Commissioners to block parking access at non-formal river access sites meant that tubers and boaters now have to park and enter the Blackfoot River and the Clark Fork River at Milltown State Park.

The region only has eight full-time staff members and another 12 seasonal staff members, including park managers, park rangers and park technicians. Those people are responsible for groundskeeping, bathroom maintenance, collecting fees and directing traffic, among other duties.

Flynn said the state parks’ staffing levels are determined by funding allocated by the Legislature, so there’s no emergency increase in years when visitation is abnormally high.

“We were not able to hire any additional staff,” he explained. “We knew that going into the season. So it was really just everyone kind of hanging in there and a lot of really tired people by the time the season started to wind down.”

Work was especially hard due to the ongoing pandemic, he noted.

“The staff works under stressful conditions in a normal year, and now we’re adding the stress of COVID,” he said. “It’s keeping themselves safe, cleaning bathrooms with more intense protocols and the same with all working areas like counters at visitor centers. It’s working to keep everyone safe, doing that all while seeing unprecedented visitation.”

Flynn said state parks usually see a gradual increase after campgrounds open on May 1 and don’t hit full capacity until schools are let out. This year, the crowds showed up on opening day and never let up.

“We never saw that gradual building up,” Flynn said. “It just went from zero to 100 overnight.”

A similar story played out statewide.

Montana State Parks hosted 3 million visitors from January through September of this year; a record increase according to FWP spokesperson Dillon Tabish.

Compared with the same time period last year, total statewide visitation increased by 24.4%. Visitation increased at eight out of 10 state parks across Montana for the year, with eight parks exceeding 100,000 visitors.

“These visitation increases represent the busiest summer on record for the State Park system,” said Martha Williams, FWP director, in a statement. “FWP staff, volunteers, and AmeriCorps members went above and beyond to keep these sites open, and to safely host visitors in the face of the pandemic. Countless families and visitors to Montana had memorable park visits this summer, and we hope their positive experiences will keep them coming back to enjoy the great recreational and cultural opportunities stewarded by Montana State Parks.”

The system of state parks on Flathead Lake saw 439,000 visitors this year, a 33.5% increase. Frenchtown Pond saw 76,000 visitors this year compared to 46,000 visitors in 2019.

“We saw huge numbers in the spring because that was where people could get out of the house and do so safely,” Flynn said. “Out-of-state visitation, anecdotally, was not down as much as we thought it might be. Really the bulk of the increase we saw in this region was from Montana residents.”

Flynn said many people are becoming “outdoorsy” during the pandemic.

“We saw a lot of visitors who were not accustomed to being outdoors, not used to camping and hiking,” he said. “They started doing that because that’s what was available. The question is how many of these people are converts. For how many people is this going to be a part of their regular life? Time will tell. There will probably be new habits in the post-COVID world. We don’t expect to go right back to 2019 numbers. We anticipate elevated visitation next year.”

Flynn said his employees were proud to have been declared “essential workers” by Governor Steve Bullock’s stay-at-home order during the spring. However, he said that kind of drastic increase on visitation, without an accompanying increase in staffing levels, will have an impact.

“It’s been a really interesting year and in some ways a challenging year,” he said. “There were impacts to some of our sites, resource impacts. They were fairly minimal. But we don’t have big landscapes to spread people around. These are small parks for those kinds of numbers. We came through this year in good shape but it’s not something I’d want to replicate. There’s going to be staff attrition and resource damage.”

Please note: This content carries a strict local market embargo. If you share the same market as the contributor of this article, you may not use it on any platform.