There will be no official crowd count for Trump's inauguration. Here's whyExBulletin

President Donald Trump arrives at the West Front of the U.S. Capitol on January 20, 2017. Scott Olson/Getty Images .

switch captionScott Olson/Getty Images

Thousands of people will gather on the National Mall on Monday to witness the swearing-in of President-elect Donald Trump.

How many thousands? We won't be able to tell you. And neither does the National Park Service.

For decades, this agency has published official crowd counts for events on the National Mall, including inaugurations, protests, parades and even concerts. But in the 1990s, Congress quietly forced the National Park Service to cease operations.

The move was intended to keep the agency out of heated debates over crowd sizes, such as the political firestorm that erupted over audience size for Trump's first inauguration.

“The largest audience ever seen for an inauguration. Period'

In the wake of his inauguration in 2017, protesters filled the streets and President Trump expressed outrage at media coverage that he said underestimated the size of his crowd.

Attendees line the National Mall as they attend Donald Trump's swearing-in ceremonies on Inauguration Day, January 20, 2017. Lucas Jackson/Pool/Getty Images .

rock legend Lucas Jackson/Pool/Getty Images

“I looked out, the field looked like a million, a million and a half people,” Trump said, complaining that television images showed empty spaces on the mall. He said it was nothing like what he had seen from his perch at the Capitol.

Sean Spicer, Trump's new press secretary, rushed into the White House press briefing room to falsely insist that it was “the largest audience ever for an inauguration. Period.”

Back and forth over the size of Trump's inaugural crowd went on for days, and while there were plenty of photos to compare, there was no official crowd count to decide.

The decision dates back to the Million Man March in 1995.

The National Park Service was removed from the crowd counting business after similar controversy over the 1995 Million Man March, organized by Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan.

Participants in the Million Man March on October 16, 1995 in Washington, DC Porter Gifford/Hulton Archive/Liaison/Getty Images .

toggle captionPorter Gifford/Hulton Archive/Liaison/Getty Images

Speaking at the mall that October day, Farrakhan boasted of the impressive turnout.

“People told me, 'You better change that number to a more realistic number,'” Farrakhan said. “I should have replaced it with the March of Three Million Men.”

There was a large crowd, but not that big.

“The Park Service made an official estimate,” said David Barna, who was the Park Service’s chief of public affairs at the time. “This was taken as Mr. Farrakhan was giving his keynote speech, and we estimated the number of people at 400,000 and it became controversial.”

Crowds gather during President Bill Clinton's inaugural address on January 20, 1993. Hulton Archive/Getty Images .

. Archives Hulton/Getty Images

To estimate the crowd that day, Barna said the agency used the same method it had used for decades. He overlaid aerial photographs on a grid, counting the density of people in the squares, and did the math. There was never an exact count, Barna said. The numbers were always round estimates.

Farrakhan and his supporters disputed the count and commissioned a Boston University professor to make his own estimate, which came in at 800,000 people, still short of a million.

It was a “huge controversy,” said Jason Alderman, then a junior congressional aide. “And this had happened many times before.”

A crowd sits during the Fourth of July Double Bicentennial Celebration, July 4, 1976. Jerry Telfer/San Francisco Chronicle .

. Jerry Telfer/San Francisco Chronicle A young congressional aide saw a solution

Alderman was working on the FY 1997 appropriations bill for the Interior Department at the time of the controversy. It was a spending bill that provided funding for the National Park Service, giving it a unique opportunity to do something about the ongoing issue of crowd counting controversies.

Event organizers always thought the agency's estimates were too small, while organizers' opponents always complained that crowd numbers were too high, said Alderman, now a corporate communications manager at the San Francisco Bay Area.

“The Park Service was caught in the middle,” he said.

Buses carrying Washington Redskins football players drive through crowds during the Super Bowl championship victory parade, February 3, 1988. Bettmann Archive/Getty Images .

. Archives Bettmann/Getty Images

So, with the blessing of his boss, Rep. Sidney Yates, D-Ill., the alderman inserted some clarifications into the appropriations process:

The Committee has not provided any funding for crowd counting activities associated with rallies held on Federal property in Washington, DC. If event organizers wish to have an estimate of the number of people attending their event, then they should hire a private sector company to carry out the count.

And with that simple paragraph, the National Park Service stopped counting crowds.

“Better to hire another ranger to make another visit to Yosemite schoolchildren than count a crowd to feed someone's ego,” Alderman said.

Dr. Martin Luther King greets his supporters on August 28, 1963 on the National Mall during the March on Washington, where King delivered his famous “I Have a Dream” speech. AFP/Getty Images .

switch captionAFP/Getty Images

But David Barna, a retired Park Service spokesman, said he believes something was lost with the end of the official, although often disputed, count.

“I know personally, I was disappointed that we didn’t do it anymore,” Barna said.

He said it was historically important to know how many people were on the mall during big events like Martin Luther King Jr.'s “I Have a Dream” speech, and to have a point of comparison for modern manifestations.

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