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Since 2000, an average of about 161,000 people have visited Sunset Crater Volcano. In 1930, the year the monument was established, 2500 visitors were reported. 1992 was our busiest year ever - 597,900 people came to visit! 
Wondering what happened in 1996? We have records of how visitation data was collected from 1993 onwards. From 1993-1995, automatic counters recorded the number of vehicles that passed through the monument, and that number was multiplied by the average number of people per car. That multiplier was 3.1 people per car in the winter, and 3.6 in the summer. In 1996, the monument's reporting changed from reporting the number of vehicles to reporting the number of visitors at the Lava Flow parking area. That strategy was used for the next twenty years, and in 2016 we began counting the number of people at the visitor center. It looks like a dramatic change in visitation happened, but it's just an artifact of data reporting! |
Last updated: January 5, 2022