2024 second-highest visitation season for Waterton Lakes National Park

Over half a million people visited Waterton Lakes National Park in 2024, the second-highest total in its history (Photo: Karsen Marzuk, CTV News)

Visitation records at Waterton Lakes National Park were broken in 2024, with the year marking the second-busiest on record.

More than 540,000 people went through the gates of Waterton Lakes this year.

“All of the mountain parks are seeing an increase in visitation and Waterton is no different,” said Matt Nodge, Waterton Lakes National Park communications officer with Parks Canada.

“Canadians are going to the mountain parks in large numbers. It's hard to say if the fire in Jasper did play a role in that, but anecdotally it may have.”

According to Parks Canada, more than 128,000 people visited the national park in August.

September saw 80,400 guests, the busiest September on record.

“We had a lot of locals, we had a lot of tourists and we had a lot of weddings that were (oriiginally supposed to be)  in Jasper that got re-routed down to Waterton,” said Shameer Suleman, president of the Waterton Park Chamber of Commerce.

“It was amazing for Albertans, international visitors and Americans to get to see an area that maybe might have not been on their radar when visiting Alberta.”

The busiest season for the national park was in 2017 when Parks Canada offered free admission to celebrate Canada’s 150 birthday.

Seasonal destination

Suleman says with Waterton known as a seasonal destination, businesses prioritize the summer season to bring in most of their revenue.

“Giving that extra family touch means everything to us so we're hoping that everyone got to see Waterton,” said Suleman.

An increase in visitors comes with added challenges for Parks Canada.

“Places like Red Rock Canyon -- especially on some of those busy weekends this summer -- got very, very congested and like other national and provincial parks, we're working to kind of address the challenges that come with increasing visitation,” said Nodge.

Parks Canada is looking to find ways to manage more people, while continuing to offer the same experience and limit the impact to the national park.

“We're using different strategies and we're looking at different effective managing techniques to manage visit use and increasing visitation,” Nodge explained.

“These are things like increasing trip planning, we promote shoulder season and promote less sensitive areas of the park for people to visit.”

The latest numbers also show a new  trend that tourists are willing to visit Waterton during the shoulder season, with a new record of 27,000 visitors set in October.

“We could be seeing increasing visitation in the years to come,” said Nodge.