3.2M visitors recorded at Rocky Mountain National Park in 2012 under new counting system

The Associated Press

ROCKY MOUNTAIN NATIONAL PARK, Colo. - The National Park Service estimates more than 3.2 million people visited Rocky Mountain National Park last year.

Park officials said Wednesday they changed the way they count the overall number of visitors last year, making accurate comparisons to previous years impossible.

But officials say statistics at individual park entrances can still be compared year-to-year.

The Beaver Meadows entrance, the park's busiest, recorded 1.3 million visitors, down almost 18 per cent from 2011. The Fall River entrance was down 1 per cent to about 805,000 and Grand Lake was up more than 3 per cent to about 432,000.

Park officials say unusual weather, construction on a major park road and wildfires in and outside the park affected visitor numbers.