Visitation · National Park

Badlands National Park visitation by month and year

July is the busiest month at Badlands, when the average temperature nearby is 73 degrees. December is the quietest, and the average temperature then is 25 degrees. An average July draws 245,621 visits where an average December draws 10,544. The crowd arrives with the warm weather and leaves with it. Annual visits rose 17.3 percent from 970,998 in 2019 to 1,139,361 in 2025.

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Visits by month, with temperature and precipitation

Bars are the average recreation visits in each month over 2021 to 2025. The line is the average temperature at Porcupine 11 N, 21 miles from the park's reference point at 2,820 feet, station USC00396736 in the NOAA 1991 to 2020 climate normals. The lower panel is monthly rain from the same station, which publishes no snowfall normal.

Annual visits, 1979 to 2025

Recreation visits per calendar year. A year with a missing month is left blank rather than estimated.

The last ten years

Year	Recreation visits	Change on prior year
2025	1,139,361	+4.1%
2024	1,094,245	+4.6%
2023	1,046,400	+3.9%
2022	1,006,809	-17.8%
2021	1,224,226	+33.5%
2020	916,932	-5.6%
2019	970,998	-3.8%
2018	1,008,942	-4.3%
2017	1,054,325	+5.8%
2016	996,263	+0.7%

Visitation at other parks

Mount Rushmore National Memorial Wind Cave National Park Great Smoky Mountains National Park Zion National Park

Compare Badlands with Wind Cave National Park

Compare Badlands with Theodore Roosevelt National Park

Source: NPS Visitor Use Statistics, monthly recreation visits, as compiled for Publicopia Labs. A year is shown only when all twelve months were reported. Temperature, precipitation and snowfall normals are the 1991 to 2020 monthly averages published by NOAA NCEI for station USC00396736, 2,820 feet above sea level. Data refreshed October 14, 2026.