Despite gas prices well over $4 a gallon, visitation to Glacier National Park in July was up 17% over last year.

The park had 896,386 visitors in July according to recently-released data.

This was the first summer in several years that Glacier did not have a timed or ticketed entry system.

July's visitation was the third most on record, second only to 2018 and 2017. In 2017, the park had just over 1 million and in 2018, 905,000 visitors.

A couple of factors likely went into the increase this year. Last year, the Park had a timed entry system for the west side of the Going-to-the-Sun Road. Last year there was construction in Many Glacier and most visitors had to use a shuttle service, which greatly diminished visitation to the valley.

Some areas went down, however. Two Medicine and Goat Lick were both down. Two Medicine is seeing construction this season, so the campground is closed. I

The high price of gas and the hike in the entrance fee for Canadians and other foreigners didn't  seem to have any impact. St. Mary was still up 23% over last year. That's the entrance most Canadians use.

This year the Park Service hiked the nonresident America the Beautiful pass to $250. The pass allows visitors to enter all national parks in the U.S.

Nonresidents without the America pass pay a $100 per person fee to enter 11 of the most visited national parks, in addition to the standard entrance fee. Glacier National Park is one of the 11 parks.