Park Service won’t estimate how many people were at the inauguration

January 21, 5:03 PMNational Parks Recreation ExaminerRandi Minetor

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Maybe there were 1.8 million people at the inauguration. AP photo

As the National Park Service runs the National Mall, it seems that it would fall to the park to total up the number of people who attended President Barack Obama’s inauguration on January 20.

The park service begs to differ, however.

In a statement distributed this afternoon, the National Park Service officially declined to provide a figure, citing the 1997 House of Representatives Report 104-625—Department of the Interior and Related Agencies Appropriations Bill.  The bill contains this language:

“The Committee has provided no funding for crowd counting activities associated with gatherings held on federal property in Washington, D.C.  If event organizers wish to have an estimate on the number of people participating in their event, then those organizers should hire a private sector firm to conduct the count.”

The Washington Post was willing to make its own estimate, publishing it in today’s edition.  The Post estimated the crowd at 1.8 million people. With no count of its own, the National Park Service made the decision to allow that estimate to stand.

The Associated Press put the crowd figure at “more than 1 million,” while an independent researcher who examined satellite images for the Los Angeles Times suggests that it was just about 1 million, calling the crowd “sparser than I thought.”

So there you have it—there may have been 1.8 million people on the National Mall on Tuesday … or there may have been less. 

Perhaps even more important than the crowd’s size, however, was its amicable nature.  The Washington, D.C. police force reported that they did not make a single arrest during Inauguration Day. There were no crowd surges at Metro stops, and thirty lost children were returned safely to their families.