It may take years to get back to Cooke City again

Cooke City felt like a very long ways from anywhere when I arrived there 52 years ago.

I had driven over the Beartooth Pass from Red Lodge, and was still awestruck when I rolled into town. I had never seen such magnificent country.

I rented a cabin from Olive Nordquist who used to own a ranch on the Clark Fork where Ernest Hemingway stayed. There were saddle horses to rent tied to hitching posts at each end of town, and bears were frequent visitors after dark.

I got a job there with an outfitter and thought I had died and gone to heaven.

Later, I bought a cabin in Cooke where I was living when my oldest daughter was born. My wife went into labor late one evening in the fall, and we raced through Yellowstone Park and Gardiner to Livingston where Audrey was born the next morning.

Much of the road we drove that night is gone now, washed away in last week’s historic flood. Same with the Beartooth Highway. Cooke City is farther away than ever.

In winter there’s only one plowed road into Cooke, and that’s through the park. There had always been talk about plowing the road over Cooke Pass down to the Clarks Fork, but it never got beyond the talking stage.

Now it must.

With roads in the park and the Beartooths washed out, the only access to Cooke is a long drive through Sunlight Basin.

Considering the extensive damage to roads and bridges. it’s doubtful that they’ll be fixed before snow flies. Unless the road beyond Cooke is plowed, the little town at 7,700 feet elevation will be cut off from vehicular access.

Cooke City, like a lot of places in remote corners of the world, isn’t as remote as it used to be. There’s Internet. ATVs have replaced the horses at each end of town, and modern motels stand where log cabins used to sit.

You can even buy a latte at a coffee kiosk.

Until the flood, Cooke was quickly becoming a lot like everywhere else. Now the remoteness of its high mountain setting has come home to roost. It’s a long way to anywhere.

I visited Cooke the last time two years ago, driving up through the park and leaving via the Beartooth Pass. It might be years before I can make that trip again.

In the meantime you can hardly get there from here.

Parker Heinlein is at [email protected]