OGLESBY, Illinois — Thousands of people are expected to arrive to Starved Rock State Park on the Fourth of July weekend. In addition to the traffic taking a toll on the park grounds, the record crowds are making parking a problem.
"We've actually developed a traffic and attendance plan," said Kerry Novak, Superintendent at Starved Rock Park.
Visitors of the park are encouraged to arrive early to ensure parking. There is a main lot, and over flow lot, plus additional grass parking. Once the grass lot is full, park goers would have to turn around.
"The last couple years, we've had unprecedented attendance spikes," said Novak.
Novak says social media is one of the reasons for the increase in park attendance.
"The social media has been big. People come out here, and you look on YouTube or something else and they've got a little picture or video of their experience. I think that has a lot to do with it," said Novak.
His co-worker, Joylyn Wise agrees.
"Social media has definitely made a huge impact," said Wise, who works for the Illinois Department of Natural Resources and helps run the Starved Rock State Park Facebook Page.
Attendance for the park in 2016 is on trend to break an all-time record. Through June of 2016, 1,283,550 people have visited. Through June of 2015, 1,909,927 that's a year-over-year increase of 186,623 people.
Wise attributes the high numbers to the fact that the park is free and the increased social media presence over the last couple years.
"You better believe it, because people are constantly checking their phones and that information is spreading," said Wise.
She says visitors take pictures while they're at Starved Rock, then share it to their social media and the popularity of the park increases from there.
While park-goers use their social media to show off Starved Rock's natural beauty, Wise uses the park's Facebook to alert park-goers of closure updates.
On Memorial Day weekend 2016 the park had so many visitors, traffic was backed-up several miles to Interstate 80, and had to turn people away.
Turning people away, is something Novak and his staff hate to do. He hopes that by checking social media, people can inform themselves.
"Hopefully people will check that when they're leaving or maybe when they get halfway here," said Novak.
Starved Rock State Park was not forced to close due to high attendance on Saturday, July 2nd, though the grass parking lots were utilized.