Few travelers were stopping in Cooke City on Dec. 28. Business owners are looking to boost winter tourism by plowing a section of U.S. Highway 212. Photo courtesy of Ruffin Prevost/Yellowstonegate.com.
Cooke City is pictured on Dec. 28. Business owners are looking to boost winter tourism by plowing a section of U.S. Highway 212. Photo courtesy of Ruffin Prevost/Yellowstonegate.com.
Few travelers were stopping in Cooke City on Dec. 28. Business owners are looking to boost winter tourism by plowing a section of U.S. Highway 212. Photo courtesy of Ruffin Prevost/Yellowstonegate.com.
Yellowstone National Park openings and closures. Screenshot from a park website on Friday.
Heavy snowfall in Cooke City is visible on mountains behind the Cooke City Store. Yellowstone Gate file photo.
Cooke City is pictured on Dec. 28. Business owners are looking to boost winter tourism by plowing a section of U.S. Highway 212. Photo courtesy of Ruffin Prevost/Yellowstonegate.com.
CODY – Montana business owners and residents in Gardiner, Cooke City and Red Lodge joined with Wyoming colleagues in Cody this past week to discuss how to ensure winter access to each other’s communities and to Yellowstone National Park, after record rains in June washed out bridges and roads. Floods have closed the park’s North and Northeast entrances.
Citing the catastrophic floods and the the possibility of being cut off from automobile access to food, medical care and essential supplies this winter, members of the newly formed Park Access Recommendation Committee said they plan to meet sometime in August with public officials in Montana and Wyoming. They seek to develop a plan to plow an 8-mile section of U.S. Highway 212 that’s traditionally left unplowed for use by recreational snowmobilers.
PARC members said during their online meeting last Monday that if repairs to heavily damaged sections of the Northeast Entrance Road between Cooke City and Gardiner are not completed by winter, U.S. 212 would be the only option for residents to connect by automobile to the outside world. They are looking for additional winter tourism from visitors by vehicle to help make up for an abysmal summer to date.
“This is a matter of survival for us,” said Terri Briggs, owner of the Big Moose Resort and president of the Cooke City Chamber of Commerce, which also serves the nearby Silver Gate and Colter Pass unincorporated communities. Briggs said a Chamber survey found business was down 50%-70% so far this summer for most local merchants.
PARC member Michael Keller said winter access out of Cooke City “is a critical life, safety and wellness issue,” and he isn’t certain road repairs through the Lamar Valley could be completed in time. Keller is general manager of Yellowstone National Park Lodges, operated by Xanterra Parks & Resorts, the park’s primary concessionaire. He also is treasurer of the Gardiner Chamber of Commerce and a director on the Wyoming Tourism Board.
The National Park Service has been unable to give a solid timeline for repairs, and likely won’t be able to until at least after Labor Day, Keller said.
Joint plowing
For decades, the Park Service has plowed the Northeast Entrance Road through the Lamar Valley, connecting Gardiner and nearby park headquarters in Mammoth Hot Springs to the remote mountain communities of Silver Gate and Cooke City.
The Wyoming Department of Transportation and Park County have traditionally plowed the Chief Joseph Scenic Highway and a section of U.S. 212 to Pilot Creek, some 4 miles south of the Montana border and just over 8 miles southeast from Cooke City. That has allowed snowmobilers coming from Wyoming to use a parking area at Pilot Creek for parking trucks and trailers, and the 8-mile section of unplowed road to access a network of backcountry trails.
The idea of plowing 212 all the way to Cooke City – “plowing the plug” – has come up previously, cited as a way to increase winter tourism by allowing auto travel from Gardiner to Cody. Proponents say wolf watching, skiing, snowshoeing and ice climbing are Cooke City area activities unavailable to those arriving from the Wyoming side, except by snowmobile.
But the plug has remained unplowed, in part because of the actual or perceived financial, logistical and jurisdictional complications of clearing a remote section of alpine highway that runs through two counties, two national forests and two states.
Snowmobilers oppose plowing, arguing it would limit some of their trail access and complicate parking.
Local consensus
Surveys over the last few years, conducted by the Cooke City Chamber of Commerce and others, show 60%-70% of local residents want the plug plowed. Winter tourism business from snowmobilers has been slowly but steadily dwindling in recent years, some PARC members said.
“No one wants snowmobilers up here more than us,” said PARC member Timmy Weamer, owner of the Cooke City Exxon. Weamer said his group will work to ensure continued snowmobile access to trails using the right of way at the outside borders of the plowed section of Highway 212.
“This isn’t about just access for snowmobiles to Cooke City. It’s about our access out and other visitors being able to get through to Cody and Red Lodge,” Weamer said. “Right now, in winter, you have to tell cars to turn around.”
Weamer’s father, Tim Weamer, lives in Red Lodge, where summer business is reportedly down about 40% so far.
Bruce Sauers, director of revenue for the Buffalo Bill Center of the West in Cody, said museum numbers are down about 20% so far this summer.
“We are faring better than most, but it’s still a significant impact for us,” Sauers said. “There are vacancy signs up everywhere, lodging rates are down and I think everyone on this call has felt an impact.”
PARC members said they want the plug plowed to ensure short-term critical access this winter, with an eye toward long-term regional tourism development. They said they share the same goal as snowmobilers, in working now to ensure the best access to trails this winter.
In a July 20 letter from the Wyoming State Snowmobile Association to Wyoming Gov. Mark Gordon, President Brenda Miller wrote that if repairs aren’t completed in time, “we fully understand that [the plug] will have to be plowed this winter to provide highway access into Cooke City.”
Miller said that if the plug is plowed, “we request that your office help ensure every available effort is made to establish an alternate off-highway route for the existing snowmobile trail which would be displaced from that section of Highway 212.” Her letter opposed plowing the plug if repairs are completed.
PARC’s Keller said it’s important to sort out how any changes would work.
“We’re not sure yet who would be responsible for maintaining that road for cars and ensuring access for snowmobiles, or what all that would look like,” he said. “So we need to start now. The clock’s ticking.”
Ruffin Prevost is a board member of the Park County Travel Council, which does not have a position on this issue. Prevost is also founding editor of Yellowstone Gate, an independent, online news service about the Yellowstone and Grand Teton national parks and their gateway communities. He lives in Cody, where he reports for the Reuters news service. He’s at 307-213-9818 and ruffin@yellowstonegate.com.
Serena Bettis is a senior journalism major at Colorado State University who is interning this summer at the Wyoming Tribune Eagle. She can be reached by email at sbettis@wyomingnews.com. Follow her on Twitter at @serenaroseb.
