Cooke City is More Unique Than Ever

I fell in love with Montana when I first arrived in Cooke City. I was 18.

Nestled high in the Beartooth Mountains just north of Yellowstone Park, Cooke was miles from anywhere. The closest town, Gardiner, was more than an hour away through the park. Red Lodge, the next closest, was a long drive over the Beartooth Pass. Cody was just a bit more than 80 miles away, but the road to get there was still gravel interspersed with sections of dirt two-track.

It felt very remote.

And still does.

Maybe even more so.

Following the flooding that wiped out roads and bridges in the area on June 13, Cooke was cut off from both the park and the pass. The only road in and out was the Chief Joseph Highway to Cody. No longer dirt and gravel, it’s now paved the entire way, and although not as high in elevation, rivals the Beartooth Pass for spectacular scenery.

Barb and I drove it last month to get to Cooke. We were there to celebrate the life of an old friend, Ralph Glidden, who passed away earlier this year.

Without the constant stream of traffic to and from Yellowstone, Cooke felt more like the place I first knew more than half a century ago,

There weren’t horses tied to hitching posts at each end of town as there were then. Many of the old buildings have been torn down, replaced with bigger, grander structures. But the mountains rising above the valley of Soda Butte Creek -- Mt. Republic and Barronette Peak among them -- provided a familiar backdrop.

In winter the road through the park from Gardiner has always ended at Cooke. Any further travel required an over-snow vehicle or skis. Now there’s talk of plowing the road over Cooke Pass to make the road to Cody accessible all winter.

The park, however, expects to have the road to Gardiner repaired by mid-October.

In the meantime, Cooke remains a more unique destination than ever. There’s less traffic, and fewer tourists and anglers. Many of the businesses remain open.

Traffic was light on the Chief Joseph Highway on our drive to Cooke, and we had the recently reopened Beartooth Pass almost entirely to ourselves on the drive home.

It was a unique opportunity to visit some special places without the crowds we’ve grown accustomed to in recent years.

I almost felt 18 again.

Parker Heinlein is at [email protected]