Explore Yellowstone - Fall 2025

Owned and published in Big Sky, Montana

PUBLISHER | Eric Ladd

VP MEDIA | Mira Brody

MANAGING EDITOR | Taylor Owens

ART DIRECTOR | Corey Ellbogen Beans

ART PRODUCTION | Megan Sierra, Griffin House, Radley Robertson

SALES & CLIENT MANAGEMENT | Ellie Boeschenstein, Ersin Ozer, Patrick Mahoney

ACCOUNTING | Sara Sipe

CHIEF OPERATING OFFICER | Josh Timon

CHIEF MARKETING OFFICER | Megan Paulson

VP DESIGN & PRODUCTION | Hiller Higman

DISTRIBUTION | Ennion Williams

Visit outlaw.partners to meet the entire Outlaw team.

CONTRIBUTING WRITERS | Claire Cella, Fischer Genau, Elisabeth Kwak-Hefferan, Sarah May, Carol Polich, Leath Tonino, Chris La Tray, Katie Thomas

CONTRIBUTING PHOTOGRAPHERS/ARTISTS |

Andy Austin, Jeff Brenner, Addy Falgoust, Jacob W. Frank, Fischer Genau, Mark Gocke, Jeff Greco, Neal Herbert, Sarah May, Alyssa McGeeley, Jim Peaco, Carol Polich, Diane Renkin, Chrissy Shammas, Katie Thomas

Explore Yellowstone magazine is distributed to subscribers in all 50 states, including contracted placement in resorts and hotels across the West. Core distribution in the Northern Rockies includes Big Sky and Bozeman, Montana, as well as Jackson, Wyoming, the gateway communities around, as well as inside Yellowstone National Park.

To advertise, contact ersin@outlaw.partners or patrick@outlaw.partners

OUTLAW PARTNERS & Explore Yellowstone P.O. Box 160250, Big Sky, MT 59716 (406) 995-2055 • media@outlaw.partners

© 2025 Explore Yellowstone Unauthorized reproduction prohibited

ON THE COVER Winter’s Coat by Jeff Brenner. A red fox pauses in the snow, its steady gaze serves as a reminder of the resilience and beauty of Yellowstone’s wildlife.

The

Salt

Bringing

Rewilding

Displays

THE PATHS WE HAVE TAKEN, THE JOURNEYS STILL TO COME

Long before rails and roads carved paths to Yellowstone, Indigenous peoples traveled through this land along seasonal routes. Elk, bison, and grizzlies followed their own well-worn trails, shaping patterns of movement that continue today. Later, whether by horse-drawn stage, coal-fired train, or the family minivan, each arrival in Yellowstone has carried the same sense of anticipation.

This issue of Explore Yellowstone looks at travel to and from the park—how people and animals have moved across this region, and how those journeys continue to shape it. We follow the story of stagecoaches and trains that once brought visitors into the heart of Wonderland, and we trace the pathways of migrating herds whose routes long predate the creation of the park.

Travel has always been more than a way to get here. It is part of the Yellowstone experience itself. The climb over mountain passes, the sight of pronghorn darting across a valley, or the pause at a small-town café in a gateway community.

One of my own favorite routes into the park begins in Ashton, Idaho, with a stop for root beer floats at Frostop Drive-In. From there, the road winds into one of Yellowstone’s

quieter sections: the Cascade Corner, named for its abundance of waterfalls. It’s a place where President Theodore Roosevelt once spent weeks at a time, and where today visitors can still find stretches of deep quiet. That mix of small-town tradition and hidden beauty captures what I love most about traveling to Yellowstone—it is as much about the path you take as the place you arrive. As you read through these pages, I hope you’ll be reminded that Yellowstone is not only a place of arrival but also a crossroads of stories, cultures, and journeys. Whether you are a first-time visitor or returning for the hundredth time, you join a long line of travelers whose paths have led to this remarkable place.

See you out there.

- TAYLOR OWENS MANAGING EDITOR

Tune into

the Park

TELEMETRY: THE SOUND OF SCIENCE IN YELLOWSTONE

NPS Telemetry Podcast

A behind-the-scenes look at the park’s geothermal monitoring, wildlife research—including wolves and bears—and conservation science in action.

YELLOWSTONE AND NATIVE AMERICANS

Everybody’s National Parks Podcast (Episode 4.7)

A thoughtful exploration of Yellowstone’s rich cultural history and its deep significance to Indigenous tribes—a meaningful starting point to connect with the land’s living heritage.

YELLOWSTONE

Parks Podcast (Episode 1)

A well-rounded introduction to the park, covering iconic features like Old Faithful, plus tips for first-time visitors on wildlife viewing and safety.

YELLOWSTONE – THE MOST WILDLIFE, THE BEST TIME OF YEAR

RV Miles Podcast (Episode 366)

Packed with practical travel tips, campsite recommendations, and prime wildlife-viewing advice— especially helpful for RV travelers.

3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8.

CELEBRITY BEARS, AND A TALE OF TWO TROUT

The Wild with Chris Morgan (Season 6, Episode 24)

Unpacks how invasive lake trout are impacting Yellowstone’s cutthroat trout and the grizzlies that depend on them—a story rich with ecological intrigue.

SHOULD YELLOWSTONE’S BUFFALO ROAM FREE?

MeatEater Podcast (Episode 643) HOW TO VISIT

A bold, wide-ranging discussion on bison management, hunting pressures, brucellosis debates, and the historical cowboy-buffalo dynamic— viewed through a hunting and conservation lens.

THE PAST, PRESENT, AND FUTURE OF GRIZZLY BEAR CONSERVATION

Voices of Greater Yellowstone (Episode 29)

A compelling dive into grizzly bear restoration efforts in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem, blending ecological insight with storytelling.

HOW I LEARNED TO SHAVE (ACT TWO — “RAISED BY WOLF”)

This American Life (Episode 815)

This episode shares a moving story about wolf reintroduction in Yellowstone through the experiences of Rick McIntyre, a longtime wolf researcher. He recounts observing the reintroduction of wolves— telling the story of “Wolf 8,” the underdog pup who bravely stood up to a grizzly despite being smaller than his pack mates. 1. 2.

A Love Letter

to the Boiling River

BY KATIE THOMAS

Near the 45th parallel north on the Gardner River in Yellowstone National Park, a steaming waterfall once rolled over travertine rocks into the stream. Rings of river stones formed pools where the 140-degree water mixed with the icy temperatures of the Gardner, creating the Boiling River: a natural hot springs two miles south of the park’s North Entrance, where locals and visitors alike converged year-round to immerse themselves in the thermal pools.

First documented by the Hayden Geological Survey in 1871, the thermal features around Mammoth are literally untouchable, with this one exception. Because the spring flowed into a running river, it was possible and legal to bathe in this hydrothermal phenomenon.

I was seven years old the first time I went to the Boiling River. We lived in Bozeman, so the North Entrance was just over an hour’s drive away. My dad was an avid hot-springer whose religion was the natural world, and my parents made an effort to take our family to special places around Montana and Yellowstone Park.

It was early October, and the cottonwoods were turning brilliant gold. Breathing in the sharp smell of sagebrush, we trudged the half-mile trail upstream to the pools. Bathers were hanging their towels and clothes on the buck-and-rail fence, which I came to understand was the only option –no changing rooms here. We lowered ourselves into the steaming water,

groping the algae-covered stones to navigate the current. Eventually we found spots in a little cave of overhanging rocks and commenced marinating ourselves in the swirling 100-degree temperatures.

“This is one of the highest flow rates of any thermal feature in the park,” Dad announced. Registering that his seven- and five-year-old daughters were not yet enthralled by science, he tried again. “Hey, stay far from the current, okay? If you get swept away, you’ll float all the way into the Yellowstone, then the Missouri, then the Mississippi, until you’re finally dumped out into the Gulf of Mexico.” (His warning was appropriate; two men had been taken by the current and drowned in 1982.)

Dangers notwithstanding, I was a Boiling River zealot from that point on. I begged my parents to take us there for special occasions – my birthday, New Year’s Day, Tuesday.

Summoning the smell of sulfur and the image of limestone deposits, I’d get ants in my pants to go back to that water.

Once, Mom made the mistake of going on a ladies’ trip without the rest of us (I forgave her eventually), and she described Yellowstone facials: smoothing river mud all over one’s face and baking it in the sun.

Once I turned 18, I was free to move to Mammoth to be closer to my favorite spot, and that’s exactly what I did. The summer after my freshman year of college,

I worked as a housekeeper and spent my free time soaking and swimming in the Gardner. It was scorching hot during the day, so the river was a welcome respite from the sun. But at night, I would sneak without compunction down to the springs with my friends for a nighttime soak.

In time, I found that I preferred the Boiling River during winter. It was less crowded, for one thing. But frosty hot springing was not for sissies; it meant you had a chilly hike and uncomfortable outdoor changing experience ahead. In fact, climbing out of the steaming pools in a blizzard without whining was a statement of your ruggedness. I became skilled at speeddressing, and once wore Tevas in February just to show off.

Sitting in that surging, cozy-hot river amongst pillows of steam and blankets of snow couldn’t be more heavenly. I’m grateful for all the times I relaxed in that water while herds of elk or bison sauntered past me through the river, all of us undisturbed by other humans. I felt sorry for people who had to settle for chemical-filled hot tubs in loud, crowded places. I needn’t have worried, because this experience had an expiration date – in my lifetime, anyway.

On June 13, 2022, a 500-year flood hit the northern section of Yellowstone Park. The area got about eight inches of combined snowmelt and rain within a 24-hour period, and the water gushed through sections of the North Road between Mammoth and Gardiner, and three sections of the Northeast Road between Lamar Valley and Cooke City.

A large portion of the trail to the Boiling River was completely washed away and the river channel itself was drastically altered, rendering it inaccessible as of this writing. I refused to believe it when the news came out but have since verified with my own eyeballs that it’s true. Even if those factors weren’t true, the Old Gardiner Road, constructed in 1879, was toast.

Like a lot of natural events, people tend to think of such things as “disasters.” I’m guilty of this. Of course I selfishly wish this hadn’t

happened. (Where am I supposed to go for my birthday now?) But Mother Nature is just being herself. We’re sitting on a super volcano, after all – Yellowstone is constantly cooking and doing other things that might not be convenient for humans.

All the money and human willpower in the world can’t control nature. What a privilege, then, to be here, now, and experience the wonders of Yellowstone – enjoy them while you can!

Katie Thomas grew up outside Yellowstone Park in Bozeman, Montana. She writes about the outdoors, people, and food for Western Home Journal, Outside Bozeman, Montana Fly Fishing Magazine, Edible Bozeman, and others. When not writing, she can be found hitting the river, building campfires, and spending time with her family.

Ways to Stay Active

in Yellowstone this Winter

CROSS-COUNTRY SKIING

Glide through fresh powder on some of the region’s bestgroomed trails. The Rendezvous Ski Trails in West Yellowstone offer over 30 kilometers of classic and skate skiing terrain, while the Tower Fall Road inside the park gives skiers a quiet, scenic route past snowy meadows and steaming thermal features.

The park’s crisp air and snow-dusted landscapes make for breathtaking shots. Wander near geyser basins or river corridors to capture steaming vents, frozen waterfalls, and the pastel light of short winter days.

Snowshoeing in Mammoth or Cooke City WINTER PHOTOGRAPHY WALKS 1. 3. 2. 4. RANGER-LED SNOWCOACH TOURS HOT SPRING SOAKS OUTSIDE THE PARK 5. 6.

Strap on snowshoes and explore Yellowstone’s quieter corners. The Mammoth Hot Springs area offers gentle terrain and frosty travertine terraces, while Cooke City is a gateway to deeper snow and more rugged, backcountry-style treks.

Wildlife Watching from Pullouts

Winter’s deep snow pushes bison, elk, and other wildlife into the valleys, making roadside pullouts prime viewing spots. Keep your binoculars ready—wolves are often seen in Lamar Valley this time of year.

Hop aboard a heated snowcoach for a guided journey into Yellowstone’s interior. These tours often visit Old Faithful and other landmarks unreachable by car in winter, with expert narration along the way.

After a day in the cold, nothing beats sinking into warm, mineral-rich water. Just north of Gardiner, Yellowstone Hot Springs offers stunning mountain views and naturally heated pools, while Chico Hot Springs in Paradise Valley provides a historic lodge setting, gourmet dining, and steaming outdoor pools perfect for stargazing.

For Everything There Is A Book

BY LEATH TONINO

If I were to choose one book to keep on the truck’s dashboard beside the binoculars, one book to stuff into the backpack along with GORP and jerky, one book to inspire and inform and enrich my ongoing exploration of the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem — what would it be? Hmm…

Wapiti Wilderness by Margaret and Olaus Murie? Grizzly Years by Doug Peacock? A Climber’s Guide to the Teton Range by Leigh Ortenburger and Renny Jackson? The Yellowstone Story by Aubrey Haines? Journal of a Trapper by Osborne Russell? A Hunger for High Country by Susan Marsh? Good options, but no, no, no, no, no, and no. The answer, for me, is a slim paperback published in 1994 (reprinted in 2001), chock full of facts and photos, details and dates, flora and fauna, earth and earth and always more earth. And it’s full of something else, too. Something subtle and elegant and powerful. Something that goes by the less-thanglamorous (and less-than-household) name of phenology. Phenolowhat?

We’ll get there in a moment.

For Everything There Is A Season: The Sequence of Natural Events in the Grand Teton-Yellowstone Area — this is my selection, a bona fide classic that park rangers would, in an ideal universe, give out for free to visitors. Frank Craighead Jr., the author, is perhaps familiar to you already. If not, meet your new best friend.

Frank and his identical twin brother John were pioneering wildlife biologists, tireless conservationists, and rugged outdoorsmen who rank with Rachel Carson, Aldo Leopold, and Ansel Adams in the pantheon of famous twentieth-century nature advocates/experts/ lovers. Born in 1916, the bros wrote and photographed for National Geographic (fourteen articles in total), conducted long-term research on Yellowstone’s grizzly population (they were the first to put radio-tracking collars on large animals), petitioned for the Wild and Scenic Rivers Act (the bill passed in 1968), and hiked everywhere in the GYE (everywhere).

It’s a lifestyle: looking, listening, jotting notes. Henry David Thoreau’s magnum opus isn’t Walden, but rather the two-millionword, seven-thousand-page, fourteen-volume journal he kept throughout the 1850s, a sprawling record of arrivals and departures, loopings and layerings, ecological happenings. For Everything There Is A Season grew from a similar practice of sustained attention to the local environment. Luckily, though, Frank’s book is only 208 pages and weighs just over a pound, perfect for on-the-move browsing. Furthermore, it’s organized chronologically, week by week, and is thus very easy to use, very welcoming of the novice naturalist, the would-be phenologist.

Imagine that you’ve walked a trail for three or four miles. Now you’re resting in a meadow fringed by dark pines, cut diagonally by a gurgling creek. Boots off and socks peeled. Sun shining. Okay, flip to page 122 — Sept. 4 to 10 — and in short order you’ll learn…

Spongy white snowberries are maturing. Mountain ash berries are glowing bright orange. Sandhill cranes are flocking and calling, preparing to fly south. Red-tailed hawks have left the nest and are fending for themselves, whereas juvenile Swainson’s hawks are begging their parents for food. Grizzlies are fattening up on voles and bulbs in grass-sagebrush habitats, but you might glimpse one digging its winter den at the foot of a big conifer,

Impressive resume, no doubt. But undergirding these efforts and accomplishments was a quieter passion, an inconspicuous pursuit: oldschool, down-and-dirty, flannel-and-denim natural history. Which brings us back to…

Phenology is the study of cyclic and seasonal phenomena. Birds migrating, then establishing territories, then laying eggs. Plants budding, then flowering, then producing seeds, then withering, then returning to the soil. Ice melting from an alpine tarn in June, then reforming in October. As the title of Frank’s book suggests, sequencing these events — locating them in time, in the roundness of the year — is the phenologist’s bailiwick. And basic observation — senses on high alert, few tools and tricks required — is the phenologist’s modus operandi.

usually on a north-facing slope. Ground squirrels have disappeared into their burrows and won’t emerge again for nine months. Bull elk are battling, amassing harems. Mule deer, moose, and pronghorn are likewise rutting. Harebell, geranium, giant hyssop, scarlet gilia, yarrow, lupine, tansy, coneflower, and other species may still be found blooming in favored sites. Deciduous trees and understory bushes, shrubs, and herbs are beginning to show fall colors. Temperatures are dropping, nights stretching as the equinox approaches.

And on and on and on and on.

Earlier, I described Frank’s book as full of earth, full of phenology. This is true, obviously. But here’s the description I really want to offer: It’s also full of crescendos and decrescendos, hidden pianissimo events, bold forte events, interpenetrating arpeggios, complex polyrhythms, stacked harmonies and soaring melodies of place. Music, that’s what I hear. Symphonic in structure and scope. Beautiful beyond words.

The point I’m trying to make is that the individual pages of this book are indeed a pleasure, an education, a revelation, yet it’s the complete text, all four dynamic seasons bound between covers, the entire year in your hands, that conveys a feeling — a feeling — of balance and wholeness, of association and synchrony, of flowing pattern and patterned flow.

Ecophilosopher Paul Shepard claimed that phenology leads us to “a deeper understanding and more refined sense of mystery.” Is that a paradox, understanding and mystery side by side, coexisting? Nah. It’s merely a way of saying phenology — and a certain unique book that lives on the dashboard beside the binos, that regularly rides in the backpack — gets us outdoors, into the world of bison and spruce, warbler and trout, waffling aspen leaves and sparkling frost, a vast and intricate terrain where observation ultimately, inevitably, births curiosity, wonder, and awe.

Leath Tonino is a freelance writer and the author of two essay collections about the outdoors, most recently The West Will Swallow You

A LEGENDARY ROAD TRIP

WITH XANTERRA

BY TAYLOR OWENS

Imagine setting out on the ultimate American road trip, weaving through the nation’s most iconic landscapes while staying in historic lodges and experiencing adventures that linger long after you return home. With Xanterra, this journey is guided by decades of experience managing national park lodges, luxury resorts, and unique adventures from Glacier to the Grand Canyon, Death Valley to Windstar Cruises.

“You know, that’s a great question,” Todd Walton, director of marketing and sales at Yellowstone National Park Lodges, said when asked how someone might begin the perfect Xanterra adventure. “I mean, I hate to say that it depends on where I’m coming from. Denver is a great option.”

From there, the road unfolds, revealing both the grandeur of nature and the thoughtful hospitality that Xanterra provides along the way.

Rocky Mountain National Park and Mount Rushmore

Starting in the northern Rockies, travelers could find themselves among the alpine meadows and towering peaks of Rocky Mountain National Park, where elk wander freely and wildflowers bloom in vivid bursts. “We operate the facilities at Rocky Mountain National Park and Mount Rushmore,” Walton said. “You know, we’re going to make sure that people come in and have a great experience while they’re visiting the national parks.”

Rocky Mountain National Park greets travelers with sweeping alpine vistas and the iconic Trail Ridge Road, the nation’s highest paved highway. Visiting Trail Ridge Store & Café, a Xanterra-managed facility, puts you right in the heart of the park.

A short drive brings you to Mount Rushmore, where the colossal faces carved into the Black Hills offer a striking mix of history and natural beauty. Visiting Xanterra’s facilities ensures comfort and convenience while placing visitors amongst these iconic landscapes. Visitors can enjoy a meal at Carver’s Café, which offers locally sourced dishes, including bison burgers and Teddy’s bison chili, and is on track to become the first four-star Certified Green Restaurant in South Dakota and the entire national park system. For a sweet treat, the Memorial Team Ice Cream station serves TJ’s vanilla ice cream, based on Thomas Jefferson’s 1780 recipe.

Travel Tips:

• Stop in Estes Park for coffee or breakfast before entering Rocky Mountain.

• Stretch your legs at the Beaver Meadows Visitor Center to grab a map.

• Scenic detour: Drive Trail Ridge Road in Rocky Mountain for stunning alpine views.

Many Glacier Hotel

Glacier National Park

Continuing northwest to Montana, Glacier National Park offers rugged peaks, turquoise lakes, and some of the most scenic roads in America. “I would start in Glacier and work my way south, because I hate the heat,” Walton advised. Staying inside the park adds both convenience and immersion. “The biggest thing with the Xanterra properties in Glacier is you can stay inside the park,” he said. “The Lake McDonald Lodge is a great option.”

Visitors can explore historic lodges, hike hidden trails, drive the Going-to-the-Sun Road, or join the famed red bus tours.

Travel Tips:

• Stop in Bozeman or Billings for coffee or a light snack en route.

• Drive Going-to-the-Sun Road early to avoid crowds and catch wildlife sightings.

• Reserve red bus tours ahead of time—they fill up fast during peak season.

Yellowstone National Park

Heading northwest, the road leads to Yellowstone, the world’s first national park. Here, the wildlife is as mesmerizing as the geothermal wonders. “Yellowstone is one of those places where you walk out and Old Faithful is going off, or you see a bison walk by, and you go, ‘I’ve never seen anything like this in my life.’” Walton said. “That’s what makes it so special.”

At Yellowstone, Xanterra isn’t just about lodging—it’s about full access to the park’s magic. With nine lodging options, four campgrounds, and one RV park, choosing where to stay becomes a meaningful part of the journey. From the iconic Old Faithful Inn and its rustic log-and-stone architecture to the peaceful lakeside ambiance at Lake Yellowstone Hotel & Cabins, each place reflects Yellowstone’s wild character. You’ll find that Yellowstone National Park Lodges arranges guided tours, interpretive programs, and in-park transportation so visitors don’t just see the geysers and wildlife—they experience them.

“What we’re really trying to do here is connect people to the park in a meaningful way,” Walton said. “Whether that’s through our lodges, our tours, or just being able to step outside and watch Old Faithful erupt—it’s about creating those moments you’ll never forget.”

Old Faithful Inn

Travel Tips:

• Stock up on coffee and snacks in Bozeman, Livingston, or Jackson Hole before heading into Yellowstone.

• Book lodging early at Old Faithful Inn or Lake Yellowstone Hotel & Cabins to secure prime locations.

Grand Canyon and Death Valley

As the journey moves southwest, the Grand Canyon awaits. Start in Williams, Arizona, a quintessential Route 66 town, where the Grand Canyon Railway offers an unforgettable train ride to the South Rim. Jim Stellmack, Regional director of marketing and sales at Grand Canyon Railway and Hotel, explained:

“As you’re coming into the area, the southwest area, one of the really cool opportunities that the Xanterra Travel Collection has to offer in the town of Williams… we actually operate the Grand Canyon Railway and Hotel. If the guest chose to stay here in Williams, they could actually get on our train, and the train takes you up to the South Rim.”

“The cool thing is that the train ride itself is part of the adventure,” Stellmack said. “You have musicians, you have cowboys on board, and then we even stage a train robbery on the way back.”

Once at the South Rim, you can take in stunning vistas, enjoy dining at El Tovar, or explore Native American culture at the visitor center. Stellmack noted, “You know, the mule rides are not as well known, where you can hop on a mule and go down to Havasupai Gardens or some areas down below the rim. We jokingly say ‘walking down into the canyon is optional, coming out is mandatory.’”

From the Grand Canyon, Death Valley National Park

offers a stark but captivating contrast. The Oasis at Death Valley, composed of The Inn and The Ranch, blends history, luxury, and adventure in the desert. The Inn, a Four-Diamond resort since 1927, offers restored historic charm, private casitas, lush gardens, and a serene spring-fed pool, while The Ranch provides a familyfriendly vibe with spacious rooms, a natural spring-fed pool, an 18-hole golf course—the lowest in the world—and a lively town square. Both properties offer unique dining, stargazing, and easy access to the park’s iconic landscapes, creating the perfect blend of relaxation and exploration. “Most people don’t think about Death Valley as being so beautiful,” Walton said. “But because of the dark sky factor and because of the wildflower factor in the springtime, it’s a place that surprises people because it’s so lush in the middle of the desert.” The Oasis provides options for camping, golf, spa, and fine dining, making the desert a luxurious retreat.

Oasis Ranch - Death Valley

Travel Tips:

• Stop in Route 66 town of Williams, Arizona, for a quick photo and snack.

• Bring plenty of water and sunscreen for the train ride and canyon exploration.

• Optional detour: Las Vegas or Beatty for last-minute supplies before entering Death Valley.

• Plan desert visits in spring or fall to avoid extreme summer heat.

Sea Island, The Broadmoor, and Beyond

Beyond the national parks, Xanterra’s collection spans luxurious resorts such as Sea Island in Georgia and The Broadmoor in Colorado. Golf, spa treatments, and historic architecture combine with outdoor adventure to create experiences that are as indulgent as they are inspiring.

Travel Tips:

• Book spa treatments and golf tee times in advance.

• Look for scenic overlooks or local attractions near the resorts.

VBT Bicycle Tours

For travelers seeking movement and exploration, Vermont Bicycle Tours (VBT) offers guided road and gravel bike tours across several continents. “The Vermont Bicycle Tours programs that we have are fantastic,” Walton said. “If you wanted to do gravel grinds or you wanted to do long days and explore different areas, they offer a lot of stuff in the Western U.S. and beyond.” Tour locations vary from Colorado, Utah, South Africa, New Zealand, Iceland, Slovakia, Canada, Chile, and many more.

Travel Tips:

• Choose tours based on fitness and terrain preference (road vs. gravel).

• Plan for luggage transport if doing multi-day rides.

Windstar Cruises

Finally, the adventure can extend to the seas with Windstar Cruises, where small-ship sailboats deliver intimate, all-inclusive experiences.

“That’s the nice thing about the Windstar Cruises is that it’s totally an elevated experience,” Walton said. “You have a truly elevated cruise experience because it’s all inclusive. It’s very high touch, and you have really excellent customer service.”

El Tovar Hotel Under the Milky Way

Travel Tips:

• Arrive at ports early for the best embarkation experience.

• Consider a pre-cruise hotel stay to adjust for travel time.

From the northern Rockies to the southern deserts, from historic lodges to luxury cruises, a Xanterra journey blends comfort, adventure, and truly unique experiences. “Not to blow smoke, but it’s true… whether it’s Windstar, Vermont Bike Tours, Country Walkers, the Oasis at Death Valley, Grand Canyon,” Walton said. “You name it, it’s legendary hospitality with a softer footprint. It really is that we walk the walk and talk the talk.” “A road trip is so much more than just jumping in the car and going and sleeping,” Walton said. “It’s everything that allows you to disconnect with one facet of your life and connect with the land and the open skies and just experiencing what’s out there.”

BY ROAD, RAIL, & REINS

5 5Fall Drives to Rival Summer Crowds

As the summer crowds thin and golden hues wash over the landscape, fall reveals a quieter side of Yellowstone Country. Whether you’re chasing changing leaves, wildlife sightings, or crisp mountain air, these five drives offer stunning views and fewer cars on the road.

Paradise Valley (Livingston to Gardiner)

Cruise alongside the Yellowstone River with the Absaroka Range in full view. Keep an eye out for anglers, elk herds, and cozy hot springs along the way. This drive offers sweeping views and a quiet entrance to the park at Gardiner—home of the Roosevelt Arch.

Lamar Valley to Cooke City

Known as Yellowstone’s Serengeti, the Lamar Valley is quieter in fall—but wildlife viewing remains prime. Bison, bears, wolves, and moose may make an appearance as you head toward the charming mountain town of Cooke City.

Beartooth Highway (before it closes!)

Often called “the most beautiful drive in America,” this alpine route offers jawdropping switchbacks, sweeping vistas, and snow-dusted peaks—just be sure to go before the seasonal closure.

Highway 191 through Gallatin Canyon

While not a direct entrance to the park, this drive down U.S. Highway 191 is worth it for the views alone. The Gallatin River runs wild through a canyon lined with golden cottonwoods and steep rock walls—a perfect detour en route to West Yellowstone.

Chief Joseph Scenic Byway

Connect to the Beartooth via this underrated drive through Shoshone National Forest. Think dramatic cliffs, river-carved valleys, and history-laced scenery—this route follows part of the Nez Perce trail. This drive connects the Wild West town of Cody to the park’s Northeast Entrance, winding past the Clarks Fork of the Yellowstone River and Dead Indian Pass.

Rails to

Wonderland

The Legacy of Train Travel to and from Yellowstone

BY TAYLOR OWENS

or much of the nineteenth century, Yellowstone National Park existed in the American imagination as both myth and rumor: a landscape of fire and ice, geysers that roared like cannons, and canyons carved by boiling rivers. To most however, it was inaccessible. Early travel meant enduring weeks on horseback or rattling stagecoaches along rough trails.

That remoteness was a defining feature of Yellowstone’s earliest decades as a national park. When Congress set aside the land in 1872, creating the world’s first national park, no railroads ran through the region. Access meant endurance. The first official visitors were military details, scientists, and artists who made these long treks.

Yet the idea of Yellowstone was already spreading. Its very inaccessibility enhanced its mystique: a wilderness set apart, protected but not easily reached.

In the decades between Yellowstone’s designation as a park and the first arrival of trains at its borders, the only way in was overland. Stagecoaches rumbled from the closest rail stop, carrying tourists from distant areas in the United States who had traveled as far as they could across the country via rail. The trips were costly, dusty, and unpredictable, but for the growing number of travelers drawn by paintings, photographs, and sensational reports of

geysers, they were worth it.

Still, this early stagecoach era underscored the limits of Yellowstone tourism. Visitor numbers remained relatively small, access was confined to those with means, and the experience itself was grueling.

By the late 1880s, as rails stretched across the West and rail companies eyed the prestige of being the “gateway to Wonderland,” the whistle of locomotives began to echo closer to Yellowstone’s borders.

“The railroads, particularly the Northern Pacific, had significant impact even on the park being established,” Alicia Murphy, Yellowstone National Park’s historian, said. “The relationship between national parks and train travel is kind of difficult to overstate from the very beginning.”

If any town claimed the honor of being Yellowstone’s first rail-linked entrance, it was Livingston, Montana. By the early 1880s, the Northern Pacific Railroad had established Livingston as a division point, then built a spur line south up Paradise Valley to Cinnabar, just short of Gardiner. Not until 1903 did the tracks finally reach the park’s boundary and the stone archway at its northern gate.

This was more than tracklaying; it was place-making. The Northern Pacific positioned Livingston as the northern gateway to Yellowstone, marketing the town as the starting point of an unforgettable journey into America’s wonderland. The company printed elaborate brochures, stocked with engravings of geysers and canyons, and distributed them across the country.

In Gardiner, the park’s northern entrance took shape. “That was considered kind of Yellowstone’s front door,” said Murphy. The depot welcomed guests who would then transfer to stagecoaches waiting just outside the tracks. By 1903, President Theodore Roosevelt dedicated the famous Roosevelt Arch at Gardiner’s boundary, a grand stone that marked the park boundary and became an enduring symbol of Yellowstone’s accessibility in the age of rail travel.

For decades, the North Entrance became the iconic first stop for thousands of Yellowstone visitors.

In 1908, the Oregon Short Line, a subsidiary of the Union Pacific, completed a branch from Idaho Falls to a brand-new town: West Yellowstone.

“There was no town there before the railroad,” Thornton Waite, railroad historian and author of Yellowstone by Train: A History

of Rail Travel to America’s First National Park, said. “I would guess the railroad had the greatest impact on the development of West Yellowstone because it was literally created by the line.”

At the edge of the park boundary, the Union Pacific constructed a depot and a collection of rusticstyle buildings designed to accommodate tourists. The company’s promotional machine went into overdrive, advertising sleek new trains like the Yellowstone Special and promising direct, comfortable access to Wonderland.

The line was unique due to its seasonality. Unlike most mainline railroads, the West Yellowstone branch closed every winter. “Every winter they allowed the line to be snowed shut,” Waite explained. “That was very unusual — most railroads would do whatever it took to keep a line open. But here, the line existed only to serve summer visitors.”

Each fall, as snow closed the line, West slipped into hibernation. Each spring, when crews cleared the tracks and trains returned, the town reawakened for what Waite referred to as “the spring campaign.”

“It was a two-to-four-day process to clear the line for 50 miles from Ashton up to West Yellowstone,” Waite said.

for the hardy or the wealthy, but for anyone who could buy a ticket.

On the park’s eastern flank, the Burlington Railroad reached the frontier town of Cody, Wyoming, in 1901. Cody itself was co-founded by William F. “Buffalo Bill” Cody, who quickly recognized the economic potential of rail access to the park. The Burlington marketed Cody as the “Scenic Gateway” to Yellowstone, offering travelers a route that passed through the Absaroka Mountains and the Shoshone River.

Though the eastern route never rivaled the north or west in sheer numbers, it reflected the competitive spirit of the era. Every railroad wanted to claim Yellowstone as part of its domain, and every town along the rails sought the prestige, and economic boost, of being a gateway.

A visitor’s journey typically began in a distant city, Chicago, Minneapolis, or Omaha, traveling westward in relative comfort aboard sleeping and dining cars. At the park boundary, passengers disembarked into stagecoaches. Rudyard Kipling captured the experience: “Today I am in Yellowstone, and I wish I were dead,” a reflection of the jarring shift from rail to wagon.

Through subsidiaries like the Yellowstone Park Company, the Northern Pacific invested in hotels and concessions within the park. The Old Faithful Inn, completed in 1904, became both a symbol of rustic grandeur and a marketing tool, featured prominently in rail brochures.

Railroads were not merely transporters; they were curators. “Basically, they made it so people could get to the park, and you’d have a place to stay in the park,” Murphy said. They made sure you had a meal to eat, and an itinerary to follow. It was a packaged experience.

“The arrival of the train was a big event. Even afterwards, they had a big party because it meant winter was over, and summer was coming, the tourists were coming, and, things were looking up. Some of the pictures show the snow [being cleared] was deeper than the train was high.”

The contrast between north and west reveals two models of railroad impact. Livingston and Gardiner adapted existing towns into gateways, layering rail access atop the already-established rail or mining communities. West Yellowstone, by contrast, was a manufactured node of tourism, designed from the ground up by a railroad with a single purpose.

Both exemplified the way railroads reshaped access to Yellowstone. They shortened journeys from weeks to days, opened the park to middleclass travelers, and embedded Yellowstone in the national consciousness as a destination not just

That packaging extended to how long visitors stayed. A standard tour often lasted five days: a circuit by stagecoach through the geyser basins, canyon, and lake, with overnights in company-run hotels.

“It was a standard travel experience,” Waite said. “I know that a lot of the people that traveled to Yellowstone via railroad were a lot of people from the East Coast and it was obviously a pretty expensive endeavor.” Despite the railroads’ efforts to broaden access, Yellowstone remained a destination for the relatively privileged. A full rail-and-stagecoach package could cost upward of $100 in the early 1900s — the equivalent of several thousand dollars today.

Within the trains themselves, the class divisions of American travel played out. Firstclass passengers enjoyed sleeper cars and fine dining; second-class passengers might ride in plainer coaches with fewer amenities. Once in the park however, those distinctions blurred somewhat — everyone endured the same jostling stagecoaches and accommodations.

In that sense, rail travel to Yellowstone was both democratizing and stratifying: more people could reach the park than ever before, but access was still defined by income.

The visitor experience extended beyond logistics into ideology. Railroads promoted Yellowstone not just as a destination but as a symbol of American pride.

Railroads became some of the biggest champions of the national park idea. They had an economic incentive, but they also helped build the narrative that these were places all Americans should see. “Jay Cook, the American financier behind the Northern Pacific, was in the midst of extending the Northern Pacific from the East Coast to the West Coast, and he saw places like Yellowstone as a significant justification for these railroad expansions, and he lobbied very fiercely for the park to be set aside,” Murphy said.

Union Pacific’s “See America First” campaign captured this ethos, urging travelers to skip Europe in favor of domestic wonders. Posters depicted geysers as national monuments, and

brochures promised an experience equal to the Alps or the Black Forest.

By riding the rails to Yellowstone, visitors weren’t just taking a vacation; they were participating in a story of national identity.

“In some ways, it’s interesting that [the railroads] were influential in creating this island of wilderness in Yellowstone—partially protected from development—because of the industrialization of the railroad,” Murphy said. “It’s an intriguing dichotomy.”

For all their influence, the railroads’ hold on Yellowstone tourism proved temporary. The very forces of modernity that had made the park accessible by train soon reshaped travel again, this time in the form of the automobile.

In 1915, private automobiles were officially allowed into Yellowstone. At first, the transition was halting. Roads were narrow, dusty, and not always suitable for the sputtering machines. Early visitors were required to obtain special permits, and convoys of cars were escorted to prevent accidents with stagecoaches still rumbling along the same routes.

Yet the freedom and affordability of the automobile quickly proved irresistible. Families who might never have afforded a full rail-andstagecoach package could now pile into a Ford and drive themselves into the park. By the 1920s, automobile tourism surged, and stagecoach lines began to vanish.

“Better roads was the real reason passenger travel declined and ended because everyone wanted to go in their private automobiles,” Waite said. “You’d have the freedom of your car when you arrived at the park instead of having to be in a tour group.”

The shift was starkest in the gateway towns. West Yellowstone, once animated by the seasonal rhythm of train arrivals, saw its great depot fall quiet. Livingston, Gardiner, Cody, and others all witnessed a decline in passenger service as demand evaporated. By the mid-twentieth century, most of the spur lines into Yellowstone had been abandoned or converted to freight.

Today, some of the old depots survive as museums, visitor centers, or community landmarks — physical reminders of the era when locomotives delivered thousands to Yellowstone’s edge. Certain routes like the route from Livingston to Gardiner “is slowly being turned into a kind of walking, hiking, biking trail … further kind of tying into that train history,” Murphy said.

The rails vanished, the cars took over — but the dream they sold still holds: Yellowstone is a place every American should see.

Taylor Owens is a writer who spends her days running in the sun, playing in the snow, or on the hunt for the best breakfast across the West. She is based in Bozeman and is the content marketing director at Outlaw Partners.

Gardiner train depot; Photographer unknown; Around 1904.

MONTANA ADVENTURES, ZERO INTERRUPTIONS

Following

the Light

AN EAST COAST PHOTOGRAPHER, AND DAVE MATTHEWS FAN, FINDS HIS PLACE IN THE WILD LANDSCAPE OF THE GREATER YELLOWSTONE ECOSYSTEM WORDS BY MIRA BRODY &

PHOTOS BY JEFF GRECO

The first time photographer Jeff Greco arrived in Yellowstone and Grand Teton national parks in 2021 on a photography tour with Backcountry Journeys, he stood in awe of the mountain ranges, geysers and wildlife.

“I literally burst into tears it was that beautiful,” Greco said, recalling the way the early morning light spilled over the Grand Teton Range’s jagged peaks.

While photography has always felt like a side gig to his full time job—owning and operating the family’s dog boarding and grooming business, Lucie’s Barkingham Palace, alongside wife Lucie—he’s made it a priority to chase that feeling and head west with his camera whenever he can. The Philadelphia native currently resides in Malvern, Pennsylvania, with Lucie and their daughter Isabella, as well as their eight dogs, and a green-cheeked parakeet named Lola. He purchased his first Canon in 2019 and fell in love with the art form, a spark that was fueled by that first trip to Yellowstone.

With those journeys, he’s grown a deep love for the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem.

“I look at the landscapes differently as far as where the light is, and how the light is affecting what I’m looking at,” Greco said. “It changes the way I look at the world. That’s what hooked me.”

Greco recalls seeing Grizzly 399 for his first time—the beloved matriarch of Grand Teton who died in a car accident in October 2024. “It took me three years to finally put eyes on her,” he said. Observing wildlife, particularly bear cubs and how they interact within their siblings and mother, is captivating.

An avid outdoorsman, and musician, Jeff and Lucie are also avid Dave Matthews fans and

jumped at the opportunity to see him in Big Sky this past August for Wildlands, not only for the live music experience, but also to support the cause. This year the event raised a record-breaking $1.3 million for nonprofit partners American Rivers and Center for Large Landscape Conservation, both organizations devoted to conserving land, rivers and wildlife in the region.

“I wanted to be a part of it,” Greco said. “The fact that it was conservation-focused and had to do with something that meant so much to me, that’s really what drew me.”

Greco’s attended 40 Dave Matthews shows, some at large stadiums with several thousand attendees. The Big Sky Events Arena, he noted, is different; more intimate. Attending shows has also helped him heal from the death of his older brother Joe, who died in 1998 and who he said was his “best friend, hunting and concert partner.”

“His music got me through the death of my brother,” Greco said of Dave Matthews. The show, its cause and the landscape it brought him to was a trifecta trip he’ll not soon forget.

While in Big Sky this August, Greco enjoyed some time in Yellowstone park, and was able to show Lucie the landscape for her first time. While his photography career has taken him to some beautiful places—Badlands National Park, Valley Forge National Park, Cape May Point in New Jersey, and Conowingo Dam in Maryland—he hopes they can return together this fall when the park slows down, the weather cools and the elk rut begins.

“I cannot wait to get back out there,” he said.

THE MAY FLOWER

YELLOWSTONE’S MOST IMPORTANT SURVIVING STAGECOACH

BY TAYLOR OWENS

awhide Johnson is a stagecoach historian and conservator, a title that only begins to hint at the decades of work he’s put into preserving some of the rarest pieces of Western history. I met Johnson for lunch, but our conversation quickly drifted to the place he calls home: his workshop. He described his workshop just outside of Cody, Wyoming, filled with stagecoaches, artifacts, photos, and research. “If you came to my shop to look at the archives, you could spend a couple of days,” he said with a laugh.

For Johnson, stagecoaches aren’t relics. They’re living connections to the stories, people, and landscapes of the American West. His work with stagecoaches began in high school with the restoration of a mud wagon from the Big Hole Stage Company. The May Flower, his 23rd stagecoach restoration, may be the most important of them all. Johnson grew up in the Centennial Valley in Montana on what he called a “starvation ranch.”

In 1931, his father purchased the Big Hole Stage Company and acquired the entirety of the operation. “Horses were going for $3 a head during the Depression,” he said. “Along with them came harnesses—some of which I still have. One harness turned out to be from J.R. Hill of Concord, New Hampshire. Ken Wheeling, a famous stagecoach expert, told me it was worth more than most entire coaches. That’s how rare it is.”

A passion for stagecoaches began right at home. “The Monida Yellowstone stage route ran right through our place, and the barn was a horse-changing stop,” he said. “The old men who helped dad had driven stages themselves, and I loved their stories. I wish I’d had a recorder and could remember all those stories those guys told me.”

He laughed when he shared that he never set out to be a stagecoach conservator. It had happened by accident.

Throughout his career, he managed large ranches, worked as a mechanic, worked construction, logging, conservation projects—always outdoor work. “All that experience with my hands prepared me for restoration,” he said.

Over the course of his career, Johnson has become one of the very few stagecoach conservators, historians, and experts in the United States. He has served as vice president of the National Stagecoach and Freight Wagon Association and has spoken nationwide about the history of stagecoaches and

transportation. “Freight wagons and the freighting industry in the West is something that people don’t talk about,” he said. “The West wouldn’t have survived without them.”

The conversation turned to the May Flower stagecoach. He recalled first spotting it some 40 years ago, sitting in pieces at the Old Trail Town Museum in Cody. “They wouldn’t sell it,” he said, “but I finally got a chance to trade a coach I had for this one.” At first, he didn’t know what he had. “It all came together after I was about half done with it—its real history, and how important it was.”

That history was significant: the May Flower was one of the first three Yellowstone coaches ordered by George W. Wakefield, the Bozeman businessman behind some of the park’s earliest tours. At different times, the coach belonged to three of the four largest stagecoach companies operating in Yellowstone. Its design was slightly different than later models—a flat-bottom coach rather than the heavier, standardized Yellowstone style

that came later. “I’m not aware of another one of these coaches,” Johnson said. In 1883, Wakefield established a verbal contract with Carroll Hobart of the Yellowstone National Park Improvement Company to transport tourists from the train at Cinnabar, Montana, to Mammoth Hot Springs and throughout the national park. The first order that Wakefield placed for stagecoaches to complete these tours were from the Abbot Downing Company in 1885 and consisted of at least four passenger coaches—the Queen, the Big Horn, the Huntley, and the May Flower. The May Flower’s service routes are less clear. Early Yellowstone roads were primitive at best. “They went helterskelter,” he explained. “Sometimes it had to go way up the creek to find a place to cross. Drivers said it was hell on coaches and people, because there wasn’t any road.” Overland travel was the name of the game for stagecoaches operating at the time of the May Flower’s service. By 1915, automobiles had begun to

replace coaches in the park. The May Flower, however, was retired, becoming a static display in Cody after 1917 outside the Burlington Inn, where it advertised trips to Yellowstone for decades. Thousands of photographs exist of tourists posing beside it. When he finally acquired it, the coach was in rough shape. Still, he managed a full restoration in about six months.

The May Flower is considered by many historians to be the most important surviving artifact of Yellowstone’s early transportation history, Johnson said.

“I’ve got five other coaches, all nice in their own ways, but the Mayflower is special,” he said. “It’s green, not Yellowstone yellow or red, and may be the epitome of my conservation work. Honestly, it kind of fell into my lap.”

Restoring a stagecoach depends entirely on its condition when received and what parts need replacing, Johnson explained. If the wood is rotten and cannot hold screws, it must be replaced.

Even matching the paint colors requires careful attention, using clues from the faint traces of old paint bleeding through the original wood. Each stagecoach also carries a unique serial number, which helps track its origin, age, and history.

Johnson’s friends and colleagues had done research and found paperwork on Wakefield and the May Flower and asked him, “Do you know what you have?”

“I had no idea,” he said. “But then I realized I’d had photographs in my own archive for years that matched the documentation. When that all came together, it was exciting—like solving a puzzle you didn’t know you had.”

Johnson’s vision for the May Flower stagecoach is to see it end up where people can truly appreciate it.

“I’m older—I won’t be able to enjoy it forever—so I’d like it sold to someone who values it as a piece of American history,” he said. “It’s one of a kind,

unmatched, and well-documented with paperwork and photographs. That’s rare. You can say anything about an artifact, but without documentation it’s just a story. This one is proven.”

“When I look at the May Flower now, finished, I see history,” he said. “No other coach in the world carries this much documented history. I’ve researched plenty of coaches for myself and others, but nothing compares to this one.”

Today, the May Flower isn’t just a restored stagecoach—it’s the culmination of a craft few people in the world still practice. Johnson is one of the very few stagecoach conservators and historians left, and the work he does preserves a tangible connection to a West that would otherwise fade. Each coach he restores carries stories, skill, and history, and without his dedication, much of that legacy might be lost. In Johnson’s hands, the past isn’t just remembered—it lives on.

Taylor Owens is a writer who spends her days running in the sun, playing in the snow, or on the hunt for the best breakfast across the West. She is based in Bozeman and is the content marketing director at Outlaw Partners.

OF PASSAGE The Price

By Fischer Genau

ocals who live off U.S. Highway 89 north of Yellowstone National Park say it’s not a matter of if you’ll hit an animal, but when.

U.S. Highway 89 is one of the main arteries into Yellowstone, following the Yellowstone River for 55 miles between Livingston and Gardiner through Montana’s Paradise Valley. The valley is home to a murderer’s row of North American wildlife, including bison, elk, pronghorn, grizzly and black bears, bighorn sheep, and wolves, and hundreds of thousands of people travel to Yellowstone’s North Entrance each year using Highway 89 to see these animals. In 2023 alone, 400,000 people visited the park through the North Entrance—that means lots and lots of cars on the road, and cars and animals typically don’t get along.

Montana has the second-highest wildlifevehicle collision rate in the country, with 10% of car accidents in the state involving animals, but on Highway 89, it’s five times that. Between 2012 and 2023, there were 1,685 documented cases of animals killed by cars on that 55-mile stretch, and an estimated cost of $32 million in personal injury and property damage (if you add the estimated cost of wildlife loss, that number jumps to $72 million). The actual number of animals killed is almost certainly higher, and the death toll includes skunks, raptors, owls, deer, pronghorn, bighorn sheep, bison, elk, grizzly bears, black bears—even one unlucky mountain lion.

The price of passage—of both animals and humans—is mounting. And some people in Paradise Valley want to do something about it.

Daniel Anderson grew up in the Tom Miner Basin, just over the hill from the valley’s Yankee Jim Canyon, and he’s driven Highway 89 more times than he can count. When he was in high school, he was driving the highway with his girlfriend in her parents’ minivan when they struck a white-tailed deer, which he called “a pretty horrible experience.” Anderson watched as each year, more and more animals were hit by cars there, and when he eventually went to grad school at the University of Montana, he started working on solutions.

At the time, the only preventative measures in place were a few signs along the roadway warning drivers of the presence of wildlife. In school, Anderson did a project on the potential for wildlife crossings in Paradise Valley, which would allow animals like elk and bears to pass over or under the highway to cross safely to the other side. After he turned it in, Anderson’s professor encouraged him to start a conversation about wildlife crossings outside of the university, so he called a handful of nonprofits and other organizations, including the Greater Yellowstone Coalition, Park County Environmental Council, Center for Large Landscape Conservation, and the National Park Conservation Association, and brought them together in Bozeman for a meeting in December of 2019. At that meeting, Anderson shared his vision for a community-led collaborative that would keep the conversation about wildlife-vehicle collisions on Highway 89 alive long enough to build momentum and actually find solutions. Everyone who attended the meeting was on board, and Yellowstone Safe Passages was born.

For the coalition’s first two years, it didn’t have a name or a leader—initially Anderson just wanted to “work independently as the dude from the valley,”—but the group kept growing, drawing more attention to wildlife-vehicle collisions on Highway 89 and working towards a solution.

ildlife crossings are proven to be the most effective way to keep animals and people safe on roads like Highway 89, but they are still relatively new in the United States. They can take the shape of overpasses that arch above a road, underpasses that burrow beneath them, and even culverts and bridges that are designed or modified to offer animals safe passage. Crossings first gained popularity in European countries like France and Germany, before being adopted by Canada to great effect in Banff National Park in the 1980s and 90s. The first wildlife crossing built in the United States was an underpass designed for panthers in Florida’s Alligator Alley in 1988, and to date, there are nine wildlife overpasses in the country and about 700 underpasses.

Despite Montana having the secondhighest rate of wildlife-vehicle collisions in the country, so far only one wildlife overpass has been completed there, on U.S. Highway 93 on the Flathead Indian Reservation (it was built at the request of the Confederated Salish and Kootenai tribes in 2010, and they called the 197foot wide vegetated bridge the “Animals’ Trail”). Other sites in the state have been identified as candidates for wildlife crossings, including the notoriously dangerous stretch of Highway 191 between Bozeman and Big Sky, but none have been constructed.

Yellowstone Safe Passages and Anderson have been working towards the construction of a wildlife overpass, perhaps several, on Highway 89 for years, and they’re getting closer and closer to realizing their goal.

YSP’s first priority is building two wildlife overpasses near Dome Mountain on one of the highway’s most lethal stretches, an expanse of grassland where elk and other ungulates love to roam. Many people refer to driving that section as “running the gauntlet,” and YSP has logged 149 carcasses there, over half of them elk, between 2012 and 2023.

“If you’re there in the winter, there are literally hundreds of elk on both sides of the highway that are bedded down in the winter, and you see them get close to you and you’re like, holding on for dear life going 70,” said London Bernier,

a communications associate at the Greater Yellowstone Coalition.

Yellowstone Safe Passages chose the Dome Mountain site based on its U.S. 89 Wildlife and Transportation Assessment, which they created with the Center for Large Landscape Conservation and the Western Transportation Institute in 2022. The assessment uses data on traffic statistics, roadkill, and wildlife movement, combined with expert opinions and community input to outline solutions for wildlife-vehicle collisions on Highway 89. In addition to Dome Mountain, the assessment identified six more priority areas where overpasses, underpasses, culverts, bridges, and fencing would improve the safety of travelers and wildlife.

“I think the hope is, with those seven priority areas, to start checking off the biggest ones first, like that herd of elk that lives at Dome Mountain,” Bernier said. “Then over time, the hope is to do projects at each of those locations, so you have a better chance of covering the whole 55 miles.”

In 2024, Yellowstone Safe Passages set things in motion. They applied for and were awarded a grant for a feasibility study to be conducted at the Dome Mountain site, and the study is scheduled to commence later this year. If everything goes to plan, it will take a year-and-ahalf to complete. Then, if the overpass is deemed “feasible,” YSP must raise the money to build it. And it won’t be cheap.

Together, the Dome Mountain overpasses come with a price tag of $30-40 million, but Shana Drimal, a wildlife program manager for the Greater Yellowstone Coalition, says that wildlife crossings usually end up paying for themselves. Every time someone hits an elk, it costs an average of $17,000 with vehicle expenses, insurance, and potential hospital bills. A wildlife overpass— combined with fencing to funnel animals towards it—has been shown to reduce vehicle-animal collisions on a particular stretch of road by over 90%, and over time, the money saved from each collision prevented adds up.

Other places in the United States have realized the advantages of wildlife crossings, and they’re building more to reap the benefits.

here’s a video on the Wyoming Game and Fish Department’s YouTube channel that shows 47 pronghorn using an overpass built at Trappers’ Point on Highway 191. Pronghorn are the fastest land animals in North America, and in the video, some of them cross the bridge running full bore, gathering speed on the downslope before shooting through a gap in the fence and out onto the grassland.

The Trappers’ Point crossing is the first wildlife overpass built in Wyoming, and it’s one of two 40-foot tall, 150-foot wide concrete arches that were built on a 12-mile stretch of roadway between the Wind River Range and the Bridger-Teton National Forest in 2012. The crossings were designed to reconnect a historic pronghorn migration route, and before their construction, the Wyoming Game and Fish Department calculated that about 140 animals were being struck by vehicles in that stretch each year, amounting to around $500,000 in damages. After the overpasses were built, along with six underpasses and several miles of fencing, wildlife-vehicle collisions in the area dropped by around 80%.

“These are proven solutions,” said Angi Bruce, the director of the Wyoming Game and Fish Department.

“They are pricey. They’re extremely pricey, but there aren’t many things in my job that I can say that we can do and have 100% success, and this is one of those. We don’t have to test it. It’s not trial and error.

We know… that they will be successful, and we will save wildlife.”

Wyoming has identified a total of 40 priority sites for wildlife crossings of some kind, and they’re about to break ground on the Kemmerer wildlife crossing project on U.S. 189, which will

include five underpasses and one overpass along a 30-mile corridor. Bruce says that wildlife crossings have been a huge success in Wyoming, and the Game and Fish Department and Wyoming Department of Transportation hope to continue building more as long as federal funds remain available.

Everywhere they’re built, from Florida and California to Colorado and New Mexico, wildlife crossings are largely popular and prove to be effective at saving both lives and money in the long term. Already in Paradise Valley, public sentiment is very positive. Anderson has spent hundreds of hours talking to people in the area about wildlife crossings, and he’s learned that, “everyone relates to the issue. They relate to it in different ways, though.”

Anderson said that some of the people he talks to are mostly concerned for the wellbeing of the animals, while others align more with the human safety side of the issue. The third group, which Anderson says is by far the largest, is concerned about the economic impact of wildlife-vehicle collisions. Shana Drimal from GYC has also seen a variety of people in favor of crossings.

“There’s broad support across the spectrum,” Drimal said.

Not everyone in the valley is bought in yet— some locals are wary of change, or don’t trust that the money spent on crossings will be a good investment, while some landowners in Paradise Valley are wary of having one on their own property. But Anderson and Drimal agree that the majority of people there are in favor of wildlife crossings. So why has it taken so long to build one?

n Montana, wildlife crossings are hard to pay for. Montana’s tax base is smaller than other states like Colorado that have invested in these structures, and the money that is available, like the funds raised by taxing marijuana that is designated for conservation efforts, is in high demand.

Anderson calls funding the 800-pound gorilla, and he says the big thing missing is a public-private partnership that raises money directly for wildlife crossings. A public-private partnership involves a nonprofit that acts as a kind of purse, receiving large amounts of money from donors and working in partnership with the Montana Department of Transportation and Montana Fish, Wildlife, and Parks to match grants received at the federal level. Anderson says that Yellowstone Safe Passages is very close to establishing this kind of public-private partnership in Montana, and he hopes to start fundraising aggressively in 2026 to pay for the Dome Mountain overpass. His goal is for YSP to raise $30-50 million before Montana’s 2027 legislative session.

But Anderson doesn’t want to stop there: “We could probably spend a billion dollars on wildlife crossings in Montana over the next 20 years, if not more. It just kind of depends on how bad we want it. How much do we want this landscape to be intact for wildlife for many generations down the road, considering the pretty substantial development pressures we’ve experienced in Montana the last 40 years?”

More and more people will keep moving to Paradise Valley, and Anderson says this kind of ex-urban sprawl poses a severe threat to a wild and intact landscape. Right now, traffic volume on Highway 89 is considered medium, which is the perfect recipe for wildlife-vehicle collisions—low enough for wildlife to try to cross but high enough for many of them to get hit. If there’s enough traffic on a road, however, something happens called the barrier effect. Passing cars create a near-impenetrable barrier that isolates animal populations on each side of the road because crossing it becomes so dangerous that they give up entirely.

“If we’re not careful, we actually could lose the place,” Anderson says. “That’s part of the reason why I think the vision needs to be big and bold.”

But it takes time to build this kind of infrastructure. People working on wildlife crossings have to think in decades, not months, first building community support and gathering data, then applying for grants, conducting feasibility studies, and raising money before finally actually putting a shovel in the ground. “I’ve had to learn patience and perseverance around much of the conservation work that we’re involved in, but I would say in particular, wildlife crossings take a really, really long time,” Drimal said. “I just had to learn that none of this gets done overnight.”

If everything goes to plan—and that’s a big if—the Dome Mountain wildlife overpass could be completed by the fall of 2029, and for Anderson, it would be the fulfillment of a nearly lifelong goal.

“To me, to have overpasses and underpasses where wild creatures can cross roadways in a safe way and also keep people safe too—this is deeply spiritual work. This is about our connection to the places that we call home and the places that sustain us…and in theory, ecosystems heal or become more resilient by reconnecting more of the system to itself.”

Once a crossing is built, it won’t take long for animals to start using it. The first to explore the strange, grassy corridor would be mule and whitetail deer, followed closely by pronghorn and Dome Mountain’s elk herds, emboldened by their ungulate cousins’ success. Bison would come soon after, and eventually, even the wary predators like bears and wolves would take their first tentative trips over the crossing. Finally, even the occasional lynx or mountain lion would chance it, following in the footsteps of all the other residents of the valley and passing safely over the dull roar of the traffic below.

For Anderson, an overpass at Dome Mountain would just be the beginning: “I think when that day comes, I’m going to be jumping up and down with joy, and at the same time be like, great, we’ve got more work to do.”

CROSSROADS OF STORY & STEWARDSHIP

Ghost Towns & Historic Spots That Feel Spookier in the Snow

Saving an Icon: The Interagency Grizzly Bear Committee Brings Together Agencies Across the West to Protect the Iconic Species

Victory Day at Old Faithful

Salt of the Earth: Montana’s Old Salt Co-op Aims to Revolutionize the Meat Business

Bringing Back the Grizzly Bear

Rewilding the Northern Plains: Inside American Prairie

GHOST TOWNS & HISTORIC SPOTS

That Feel Spookier in the Snow

When snow blankets the mountains of Yellowstone Country, silence takesover.Thewindrattleslooseshutters,snowcrunchesunderfoot, and history feels closer — almost alive. In ghost towns and historic streets, it’s easy to imagine the miners, homesteaders, and travelers who braved long winters here. The past doesn’t feel distant at all; it lingers like breath in the cold air.

GHOST TOWNS

NEVADA CITY

Once alive with the frenzy of the gold rush, Nevada City is now a collection of weathered cabins and false-fronted buildings. In winter, snow drifts across the boardwalks and frost seals shut the doors. The echoes of 1860s miners still seem to linger in the cold air, as though you’ve stepped into a town that waits for its people to return.

OLD CHICO

Up a lonely road in Emigrant Gulch, Old Chico hides beneath deep snow. Crumbling cabinsandstonefoundationsmarkwhereprospectorsoncegambledeverything for a strike. A small cemetery lies nearby, where headstones poke through the drifts. On a gray winter day, the place feels deserted — but not entirely empty.

CINNABAR

NorthofYellowstone’sGardinerentrance,Cinnabarwasonceabustlingrailtown. Now it’s little more than an open plain swept by wind and snow. Close your eyes and you can almost hear the hiss of steam engines and the chatter of travelers bound for the park. Standing there in winter, with nothing but the sound of the wind, it feels like the town slipped quietly into another world.

HISTORIC SPOTS

VIRGINIA CITY

Virginia City slows to a hush in winter. Snow settles on the wooden boardwalks anddrapesthefalse-frontsaloons,softeningtheoutlinesofthisonce-booming miningtown.Withfewvisitorsaround,shadowslengthenintheoldwindowsand the stories of vigilante justice feel especially close. It’s a place where the past seems to stir just beneath the snow.

COOKE CITY HISTORIC DISTRICT

At the edge of Yellowstone’s Northeast Entrance, Cooke City remains alive, but itsmining-eracabinslookghostlyundersnow.Thesoundofsnowmobilesfades quickly, leaving only the whisper of wind through the trees. It’s easy to imagine the miners still huddled inside, waiting out another storm.

RED LODGE (HISTORIC DOWNTOWN & MINING SITES)

Red Lodge glows in winter, its brick buildings standing strong against snowpackedstreets.Remindersofitscoal-miningpastlingerinthesurroundinghills, and small cemeteries mark those who lived and worked here long ago. On a quiet winter evening, the town’s history feels close.

Saving an Icon

The Interagency Grizzly Bear Committee brings together agencies across the West to protect the iconic species.

BY ELISABETH KWAK-HEFFERAN

ast May, officials at Yellowstone National Park had to take an unusual step, for an unusual reason: euthanize a grizzly bear because it had figured out how to break into the park’s bear-resistant trash containers. The 11-year-old male upended a recycling bin at the Midway Geyser Basin parking lot and flipped over an 800-pound dumpster at Nez Perce Picnic Area. Each time, he learned the lesson that humans equal food, and his natural aversion to people faded. The risk of the grizzly injuring someone rose, until park biologists felt compelled to trap and euthanize him.

This is an unfortunate outcome for the federally threatened grizzly bear, and for the many people who visit Yellowstone each year hoping to catch a glimpse of one of these awe-inspiring animals. But the very fact that the story qualified as news is a good sign for the iconic species. Thanks to a decades-long, coordinated effort to reduce humangrizzly conflicts, bear removals like this now happen only rarely. The last time Yellowstone officials had to euthanize a grizzly was 2017.

Wildlife managers across the West employ a suite of strategies to protect both bears and people. Besides securing garbage bins in grizzly habitat, they also educate

recreationists and ranchers about safe practices in bear country, monitor bear populations, track where grizzlies go, protect important bear habitat, and help Western communities coexist peacefully with bears. Growing grizzly bear populations and expanding territory are proof that these efforts are paying off.

Behind this success story of grizzly conservation sits an unassuming organization called the Interagency Grizzly Bear Committee (IGBC). For the past four decades, it has brought together federal, state, and tribal governments for one goal: save the grizzly bear. Here’s a closer look at three important ways the coalition is doing exactly that.

Coordinating Recovery

Before European colonization of the West, the grizzly bear roamed from Alaska all the way into Mexico. But the new settlers feared grizzlies, systematically killing them until the last survivors were confined to remote parts of the Northern Rockies—just two percent of their former range in the Lower 48 states. Biologists began to worry about the bears’ plummeting populations in the 1960s, and in 1975, grizzly bears became one of the first animals to be listed under the new Endangered Species Act. Only 700 to 800 individuals remained in the continental U.S., and their numbers were dropping.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) took charge of grizzly recovery, but the agency quickly recognized a critical truth: Bears don’t care about jurisdictional borders. The West’s public lands sit under a patchwork of federal, state, and tribal management, and bears wandered

across all of them. Any efforts to save the grizzly would need everyone on board.

Thus, the creation of the IGBC in 1983, a coalition that encompasses any agency that deals with grizzlies. On the federal level, that includes the National Park Service, National Forest Service, Bureau of Land Management, and U.S. Geological Survey; state wildlife agencies from Montana, Wyoming, Idaho, and Washington, plus tribal nations in those states, round out the group. Five regional subcommittees, plus an executive committee and one dedicated to education and outreach, meet regularly to share grizzly population numbers, best practices, and emerging challenges. “We’re sitting down at a table with all the agencies involved, looking at what works best for bears and people into the future,” says Dan Thompson with the Wyoming Game and Fish Department.

“There’s a lot of expertise manifest in a lot of people, and in different agencies,” says Quentin Kujala, chief of conservation policy at Montana Fish, Wildlife & Parks. “The IGBC brings all that together in thoughtful discussion and debate.” Thanks to IGBC coordination, stakeholders decide what actions should be priorities and keep all parties up to date on management techniques. For example, IGBC experts make sure members are using the best available science to estimate grizzly bear numbers. The IGBC also helps agencies agree on an overall conservation strategy. “It’s very powerful to

get in front of the public and have unanimous support from land management agencies and tribal partners, that this is our path to move forward,” Thompson says.

As of 2023, the USFWS estimates there are at least 2,314 grizzlies in the Lower 48 states. The IGBC continues to lead agencies in recovering the bear enough to delist it from the Endangered Species Act. “I don’t know how [recovering the grizzly] could be possible without the IGBC, given all the pieces out there that have to be reconciled,” Kujala says. “Without that coordination and communication, it suddenly becomes very difficult.”

Plenty of backcountry food canisters, campground lockers, coolers, and garbage cans claim to keep out bears. But how do you know if they really work? Well, if the item is on the IGBC’s official list of bear-resistant products, then an actual grizzly bear tried— and failed—to get into it.

The grizzlies at the Grizzly and Wolf Discovery Center in West Yellowstone, Montana, serve as the IGBC’s busiest product testers (Washington State University also runs some tests). Manufacturers send their products to the nonprofit wildlife center—as many as 60 different ones come through in a year—where employees bait them with fish, honey, peanut butter, and sometimes, roadkill. Then, they place the product in the bear habitat to see what happens. If an item survives an hour of “paws-on” contact with the bears, then it earns the IGBC’s seal of approval. Only about half of tested products make the cut.

For a smaller item, like a cooler or bear canister, grizzlies will often try what testing program manager Chris Wiese calls the CPR Method: “They stand on their hind legs and pounce on it with their two front paws like they’re doing CPR.” Many a lid will pop right

off. That kind of brute force works for all kinds of items. The center once tested a birdfeeder that sat atop a high pole anchored in a fourfoot-deep concrete base. Within half an hour, the tester grizzly dug the concrete out of the ground, ripped down the pole, and bent the birdfeeder’s metal bars to get at the birdseed. Other times, the bears outsmart the gear. One grizzly, Kobuk, earned the nickname “The Destroyer” for his container-busting prowess.

He would analyze the products,” Wiese says. “He would study latches, putting his eyes up to them, and then turn them at an angle so his claws could work like fingers.

He laughs, “Kobuk broke a lot of hearts.”

Testing happens during visiting hours, so the public can watch the bears put items through their paces. “It’s very entertaining to watch, but it serves a really valuable purpose,” Wiese says. “It’s so that wild bears aren’t being

As grizzly populations continue to rebound in the northern Rockies, bears are expanding into places they haven’t been regularly spotted in a long time. Suddenly, people in some Western towns need to get used to the idea of sharing habitat with grizzlies, whether that means taking steps to secure garbage and grain or remembering to grab bear spray on the local trails. That’s where the IGBC’s Bear Smart Communities program comes in.

Within the last few years, people had been seeing grizzly bears more frequently in and around the rural town of Choteau, Montana. Several people had even been injured in bear attacks after surprise encounters. So, Ali Morgan and her friend Anne Carlson decided to do something to prevent more grizzly-human conflict. Morgan, then a grizzly bear management technician with Montana Fish, Wildlife & Parks, turned

taken out of the population due to unsecured food. It’s keeping bears wild, and keeping people and bears safe.”

to the IGBC’s website for advice on setting up a Bear Smart program. “Their framework makes it significantly easier to get things started,” she says. “[That was] super-important.”

Morgan and Carlson launched Teton Bear Smart in 2023. Besides supplying the group with educational materials and tips, IGBC also issued them several grants totaling $7,500. Teton Bear Smart used the money to start a fruit gleaning program, put on school outreach events, and most prominently, hold an annual Bear Fair. Last year, the event attracted 100 people (in a town of about 1,700), who practiced using bear spray with inert canisters, then took home a free can of bear spray. “I like my community, and I like wildlife,” Morgan says. “We want to mitigate any potential problems bears could get into.”

Elisabeth Kwak-Hefferan is a Missoula-based writer and editor who specializes in climate, environment, public lands, and outdoor recreation.

Victory Day at Old Faithful

BY CHRIS LA TRAY

n June 25, 2023, I left my cramped Jackson, Wyoming, hotel room in the pale, pre-dawn light and headed north on Wyoming Highway 26. I wanted to beat the crowds which, just after sunrise every day, surge into the beautiful valley yonder and, hopefully, have a little time with the land to myself. I was clear of town limits ahead of the masses and, before long, the golden light expanding from the east was chasing shadows from the crags and jagged peaks of the mighty Grand Tetons. A pair of leggy moose traversed knee-high grasses through a meadow parallel to the highway as I inched along watching them. It was glorious, and I would be hard-pressed to think of a better way to begin the day anywhere in the world.

My trip north was ultimately a journey home to Missoula after having been on the road a couple of weeks, and my meandering route would include a visit to the Old Faithful area of Yellowstone National Park. That particular region isn’t necessarily my favorite part of the park – I’m a Lamar Valley guy – but I wanted to visit my friend Alyssa McGeeley (Muscogee/ Creek) at the Yellowstone Tribal Heritage Center. Alyssa was, at the time, the Tribal Center Coordinator for Yellowstone Forever, and I’d not yet seen the Center. When she knew I’d be passing through the park on my return from a book festival in Jackson Hole, she urged me to stop and say hello.

The Yellowstone Tribal Heritage Center, founded in 2022 as part of Yellowstone’s effort to “re-Indigenize” the park in the wake of its 150-year anniversary, is managed by Yellowstone Forever (YF), the park’s official nonprofit partner, in partnership with the National Park Service and Tribal consultation. In the first 150 years of YNP’s existence, Indigenous presence has largely been erased, and it is time to change that. The Center’s purpose to celebrate Indigenous artists, scholars, and presenters, and give them an opportunity to meet face-to-face with visitors, is a giant first step. Prior to my trip to Jackson, I participated in a meeting between YF, Park Service

employees, and a couple dozen Native folks to discuss exactly what a re-Indigenization might look like. Headed home, though there is still so much work to be done against the broader effort, I was eager to experience the vibe of this transformative energy. I wasn’t disappointed.

Not that familiar with the expanding footprint of the Old Faithful area, the center took some finding. I arrived early, waited for a store near the Old Faithful Lodge to open so I could get more coffee, then wandered across the parking lot. Cars were already beginning to stack up in the lot and I was pleased to make conversation with several of the large, stunningly black ravens – gaagaagiwag in the Anishinaabemowin of my Little Shell people – who frequent the area. I stood and watched with delight as one of them patiently worked at the zipper of a bag attached to the front handlebars of a mountain bike in the back of an oversized pickup. I am never not amazed at the displays of intelligence these relatives regularly share with me.

I found the Tribal Heritage Center located just between the Old Faithful Visitor Education Center and the Old Faithful Lodge, the famous geyser just yonder. The building was a little larger than I expected, and, when I entered the front door, Alyssa was inside and bustling about, preparing for the day’s wave of tourist

visitors. We hugged it out and then she showed me around. To the left of the entrance is a gift shop; they sell cards and art prints and books and other things you might expect. But to the right is a decently sized room for that week’s visiting artist-in-residence.

“You’re just in time,” Alyssa told me. “Kelly just got set up. I’ll introduce you.”

Every week during the summer features a different artist in residence. Kelly Lookinghorse, in residence during my first visit, is an Oglala Lakota elder who, along with his wife Suzie, makes many things such as beaded moccasins, medicine bags, dream catchers, and, of particular interest on this day, drums. Their wares were displayed on racks and stands all around the room. Suzie, smiling and gregarious (she’s “a California Indian!” Kelly would later tell me, assuming this would explain her demeanor), stood behind a table and handled all the commerce. She gave me a pack of cards she

said she’d brought from the casino near the encampment at Standing Rock when they’d been there in solidarity with the Water Protectors. They are in my desk at home, my go-to deck for bare knuckle games of solitaire waged against myself.

When Alyssa introduced Kelly and me –Kelly, a large man in a T-shirt with a lined face and a quick grin, was sitting on a folding metal chair beside a large drum – we shook hands. He gestured to an identical chair beside him, and I sat down. Kelly told me that this was the first time he was away from his home in Pine Ridge on this particular date in many years, and that he was missing being among his people for Victory Day. Startled, I realized that this very day was the 147th anniversary of the Battle of the Little Bighorn, or the Battle of the Greasy Grass, that went down over the two days of June 25 and 26, not so far from where we were seated, in 1876. This conflict, of course, was when a combined camp of Lakota, Northern Cheyenne, and Arapaho people wiped out the entire 7th Cavalry under the leadership of George Armstrong Custer. It was a glorious and significant victory for the tribes, one still celebrated annually by the Indigenous people involved, many only a couple generations removed from those who fought in it. The reverberations of that battle still linger in tribal communities today in varied and significant ways. It is as important a day as any celebrated in this part of the world.

Kelly went on by telling me about the drum he was sitting beside. It was large and round, perhaps three feet in diameter. A “big powwow

drum,” as he called it, that he had made himself. The cottonwood shell was made from a deadfall tree on his land, and the stretched buffalo skin drumhead was from a bison who had given himself to Kelly’s rifle. The drum was beautiful.

“I’ve never played it before,” Kelly said, thumping it softly with his thumb. The drum’s voice in response was deep and stirring. “Would you like to join me in playing it, and I will sing the Victory Song?” I was stunned. Of course I said yes. I’d never been invited to play for such a significant moment before myself, and to do so on this day with an elder from the community directly impacted by that bloody day more than a century-and-a-half ago was an honor I did not take lightly. Kelly produced some sage and introduced it to fire; we smudged ourselves in the purifying smoke, then he smudged the drum. Dewe’igan is the word for drum in Anishinaabemowin and means “the one who makes the sound of the heart.” Mine was thumping before we even began.

While Kelly sang and played, I followed his lead. It was an experience that I will carry with me for the rest of my life. I didn’t know the words, but I felt them, tears rolling down my cheeks. It seemed to last forever while also ending far too soon. When we finished there was a deep pause, then I thanked Kelly for the experience. I didn’t have words to express how I felt.

This kind of interaction is important. While not everyone will have the unique experience I did – the Center wasn’t even technically open, so the song was experienced by only a group of five or six of us present – anyone who visits will have an experience of some kind. Kelly, for example, invites visitors to play the drum with him whenever the mood takes him, and it does often. This can be life changing, and the transformation of heart and spirit that may result is an example of “re-Indigenization” that cannot be understated. I left that afternoon after too short of a visit enthusiastic about the steps that are already being taken inside Yellowstone National Park to remind people of the existence of inhabitants who have always been there. The

Land herself knows what is going on too and is a mighty and eager participant in the process of inviting us home.

Two years later, the Tribal Heritage Center is going strong. Alyssa, now YF’s Tribal Engagement Manager, is still involved though not in the day-to-day labor of running the Center. That position was handled by my ebullient and energetic friend Georgeline, or “George,” Morsette (Chippewa Cree). This past summer in 2025, from May to October, the Center featured more than twenty-five different artists representing more than a dozen of the twenty-seven associated Tribes recognized by Yellowstone National Park as having a traditional relationship with the region. These folks represented Native creativity in myriad ways, from beading and painting to storytelling, fashion, and language. Kelly Lookinghorse was back, though I missed his visit. When I was there in mid-August, I was able to meet Jim Trueax, one of my Little Shell tribal relatives who is a fabulous painter. The most enjoyable part of the visit was watching Jim interact with visitors from all over the world. The experience was stirring.

The Tribal Heritage Center is a beautiful and necessary presence in the park and I’m grateful for its existence. It is only a beginning, though. I like to imagine something additional and bigger, something located somewhere different from the commercialization of the area around Old Faithful that feels a little gross. What if there was a large visitors center somewhere that is interactive and tells more of the story of all the tribes who were participants in the creation of life in what we now call Yellowstone? And, somewhere else, a yearround teepee encampment? The possibilities of what could be done are myriad and exciting. More than just changing a few place names, I would love to see Native presence threaded through the Yellowstone experience of every visitor throughout the park, not just a single installation one might miss if they looked the wrong direction. The game will be long and wonderful to behold.

Chris La Tray is a citizen of the Little Shell Tribe of Chippewa Indians. His multi-award winning third book, Becoming Little Shell: A Landless Indian’s Journey Home, was published by Milkweed Editions in 2024. He writes the newsletter “An Irritable Métis” and lives near Frenchtown, Montana. He was the Montana Poet Laureate for 2023–2025.

Left/Opposite Top: Yellowstone Tribal Heritage Center sign, PHOTO COURTESY OF NPS / JACOB W. FRANK

THE FOLLOWING PHOTOS ARE COURTESY OF YELLOWSTONE FOREVER / ALYSSA MCGEELY:

Left/Opposite Middle: Stacia Morfin - Nez Perce (3)

Left/Opposite Bottom: Nimipuu (Nez Perce) traditional twining bags and cedar basket displayed by Gwen Carter

Right/Above Top: Kelly & Kaulouyah LookinghorseOglala Sioux

Right/Above Bottom: Stacia Morfin - Nez Perce

SALT of the Earth

Montana’s Old Salt Co-op aims to revolutionize the meat business, one grass-fed steak at a time.

BY ELISABETH KWAK-HEFFERAN

ome came for the music, folksy acts playing to a crowd swaying on the grass. Some came for the lectures, sitting on hay bales to hear panels about creating bird habitat and ranchers’ mental health. Some came for the vibes, browsing stands of handmade beeswax candles and oil paintings of elk. But all 2,800 attendees at the Old Salt Festival came for the meat.

All day, chefs had been tending crackling cookfires in the center of the festival grounds on the Mannix Family Ranch in Helmville, Montana. Carrots, corn, and cabbage from local farms hung suspended over one blaze; a pair of spread-eagled lambs, raised 100 miles to the east, roasted over two others. By midafternoon, the line to taste the samples—with a beef dip sandwich and a lamb-and-veggie bowl, it was really a whole meal’s worth of food—was hundreds deep. Tanned men in cowboy hats and knee-high muck boots stood next to women in pioneer-chic gingham dresses and nose rings. Once served, strangers grouped up around wide standing tables, the jus dribbling down their chins as they grinned their approval to each other.

An annual event like this—a three-day mix of regenerative agriculture conference, Americana concert, arts fair, and food fest— might seem like an odd addition to a meat company’s portfolio. But for five-year-old Old Salt Co-op, Old Salt Festival is a natural fit. Bringing people together, over fire and meals, to support a regional food system is exactly what the brand is about. More than just fun, the festival is “a cultural gathering for change,” Cole Mannix, Old Salt Co-op’s president and cofounder, said. Mannix and his partner ranchers want nothing less than to change the way meat goes from pasture to plate. And they’ve built an entirely new system to show the way.

Cole Mannix, 41, grew up on a large cattle ranch in the Blackfoot River Valley, part of the fifth generation of a family that has been on the land since 1882. As a kid, he moved cows on horseback, fixed fences, and made hay. He recalls late-night dinners after ranch work was done with his parents, aunts, uncles, and cousins, swapping stories about family legends (like that time a young Cole drove the tractor off a 15-foot cliff).

Still, getting into the family business wasn’t a foregone conclusion. Mannix studied biology and philosophy in college, then flirted with becoming a priest, before taking a job at the conservation nonprofit Western Landowners Alliance. All the while, he was turning over big ideas about a conventional food system that prizes short-term profit over long-term stewardship and forces ranchers to work on razor-thin margins. “I felt that the commodity system that we have all sold into for generations is an extractive business environment in which we won’t last,” he said, “and that doesn’t serve either people, from the standpoint of nourishment, or land, from the standpoint of ecological health.”

Mannix’s family had long practiced regenerative ranching, a style that prioritizes soil health, water quality, and biodiversity. But in a market dominated by the rock-bottom prices of giant grocers like Walmart and Costco, “There’s no way to maintain good stewardship at the margins it requires to stay on those shelves,” Mannix said. The conventional meat industry incentivizes Montana ranchers to overgraze their lands and sell their cows to one of a handful of feedlots and meatpacking companies. Mannix imagined a better way. “I thought, well, I can’t change the big system, but I can build a little system that is a model of what I care about,” he said.

In the fall of 2020, he asked a few ranchers with similar values to meet. Some of them, like him, had already tried, and failed, to start their own regenerative meat brands. “We’ve been putting regenerative fuel into a conventional engine,” Mannix said. What they needed was a whole new car.

smashburger joint called The Outpost that sits inside the bar across the street. The steaks (plus sausages, beef liver, and bone marrow butterburgers) all come from Old Salt ranches, and all are aged and cut at the co-op’s own meatpacking facility.

Over two days (it was supposed to be one, but a snowstorm fortuitously trapped them for an extra day), Mannix and his handpicked collaborators brainstormed what it would take to build a regional meat economy for Montana. “Most of the conversation was visionary,” remembered Hilary Zaranek, a partner in J Bar L Enterprises, which operates four regenerative ranches across the state, and one of Old Salt Co-op’s founding members.

“How do we take all of these ethics and values around our relationship with the land and with each other, and make a product and put it in front of a person who also cares about those values?”

- HILARY ZARANEK

That second part was the toughest nut to crack. The crew— Zaranak and her husband, Andrew Anderson, plus Cole’s brother, Logan Mannix, and Cooper Hibbard of Sieben Live Stock Company in Adel, Montana—were already committed to regenerative ranching. “But that only gets you five percent of the way,” Mannix said. “Getting their product to market profitably is an incredible mountain to climb.”

But what if they could create a much smaller system, one in which livestock were raised, slaughtered, distributed, and consumed right there in Montana? One that controlled each step of the process and rewarded producers for their ecological values? It would take a huge upfront investment and plenty of risk. Still, Mannix said, “We decided that the status quo was riskier than anything we might do.”

Around lunchtime in Helena, Montana, diners begin to trickle into a corner building in the lively Last Chance Gulch district. Up front, shoppers browse a butcher’s case of New York strip steak and kielbasa sausage; a sign on the glass explains the difference between grass-finished and grain-finished beef. Behind the wooden tables and framed ranch photos on the walls, a wood-fired grill the size of a St. Bernard flares up to meet a rotating menu of steak specials. Free plant-based diapers are stocked in the bathroom.

This is The Union, Old Salt Co-op’s premier restaurant. Opened in 2024, it joined the co-op’s first foray into dining, a

To say the food is good is an understatement—under Culinary Director Andrew Mace, The Union snagged a James Beard Award nomination for Best New Restaurant this year, alongside nominees from places like Seattle, New York, Pittsburgh, and Washington, DC.

The two restaurants exist alongside Old Salt Co-op’s directto-consumer meat business. These steaks and chops can’t be found on grocery store shelves. Instead, buyers can opt for a meat subscription, in which a package of various cuts and sausages arrive at their doorstep each month, or even go all in on a 225-pound “beef share bundle.” The co-op also sells one-off orders of items like ground beef, tri tip, and ribs. Now, the brand counts about 750 Montana families as customers; they aspire to serve at least 5,000.

With all its arms—the ranches, meat processing facility, meat sales, and restaurants—Old Salt controls every step of the business, from production to distribution to sales. (The festival serves as a kind of marketing tool, among its other aims.) A vertically integrated structure like this ensures that its ranchers, all joint owners of the company, will benefit at every step. “We’re trying to give ranchers more stake in the food system than they’ve been a part of to date,” Mannix said.

Two more Montana ranches have signed on since the founding group, for a total of five: LF Ranch in Augusta and Cordova Farm in Power. Mannix doesn’t have a strict set of criteria for his partners, other than that each one hires a third-party company to monitor its ecological health. All four of Old Salt’s cattle ranches have also decided to enroll in Audubon’s Conservation Ranching program, which helps ensure healthy bird habitat on private grasslands. “The more important criteria is the way they see the world and the way they see business,” Mannix said. “I trust that they are world-class people with world-class operations.”

And Old Salt’s structure aims to reward that dedication.

“What we’re trying to do with Old Salt is keep more dollars on the ranch, feeding the soil,” Anderson, of J Bar L Enterprises, said. A rancher who grew up on land just north of Yellowstone National Park, he said, “I see how important it is to be ranching in a way that is promoting the health of the ecosystem. I really feel like, if we can create a regional food system that can hold those values, and that can compensate people for those values, then all boats will rise.”

“Having control allows us to carry the value system from start to finish,” Zaranek added. “And that is huge.”

Going into its sixth year in business, Old Salt Co-op shows no signs of slowing down. At press time, the company was in the process of acquiring a United States Department of Agriculture meat processing facility, a move that will open the door to wholesale meat sales and allow Old Salt to process meat for other producers, too. (Before that, the company’s license allowed sales only to the brand’s own restaurants and directly to consumers.) Mannix has his eye on opening more smashburger joints and maybe putting on some micro festivals in the same spirit as Old Salt’s flagship event. Perhaps they’ll also partner up with other local Montana meat brands to fulfill larger accounts, like with local hotels.

All of this potential growth will help the co-op absorb more and more of its ranches’ livestock. Right now, to remain economically viable, all the ranchers must still sell most of their animals into the conventional system. But as Old Salt grows, each ranch has been steadily moving higher percentages into the new business.

Beyond its own bottom line, the team behind Old Salt also hopes other ranchers will follow the trail it’s been blazing. “Instead of four big packers, I want to see 4,000 little and medium-size packers,” Mannix said.

“Instead of Tyson, with 40 food brands, I want to see 40 food brands that are independent from the big guys. I want to see a richer food culture than Applebee’s and McDonald’s.”

All of that will take winning over consumers accustomed to shopping for the cheapest items and convincing them that “invisible” benefits like healthy soil and water are worth a few extra bucks. “Ultimately, what you feed with your food dollar grows,” Mannix said. “Right now, most of us, with most of our dollars, feed an anonymous food system that is extracting from the soil. It’s going down our rivers and washing into our oceans. It’s extracting from biodiversity. It’s paving beautiful places, and it’s making people pretty damn sick.” Old Salt Co-op offers people a way to opt out. Not only by avoiding a damaging system, but also by supporting one that gives back to the landscape.

It forms the spiritual core of the business, and it might as well be tattooed across Cole Mannix’s chest.

The very name of this venture, Old Salt, plays off the idea that a sprinkle of salt can improve the flavors of a dish—just as humans can improve the health of the world around them.

“We’re not just parasites, we can actually enhance things and be part of wealth creation that’s not just about us. Where your neighbor’s health is part of yours. Where the rest of the living world can also exist and thrive.”

- COLE MANNIX

Mannix paused, smiling. “That’s worth dying for. It’s worth livingfor.”

Each one of the thousands of people who walk into the Old Salt Festival must first pass seven-foot-tall letters spelling out a message against the backdrop of grassy fields and sloping mountains: LAND IS KIN. The same phrase is carved into a wooden sign hanging from the ceiling at The Union. Land is kin.

And for those who love both Montana landscapes anda good steak, it’s certainly worth thinking a little more carefully about where they buy their meat.

Bringing THE GRIZZLY BEAR

Back

By Fischer Genau

DISCLAIMER: This story tracks the movements of “Bruno,” a male grizzly bear from the Northern Continental Divide Ecosystem. Bruno is a creation of the author and does not reflect data gathered on any specific grizzly, although it aims to present a plausible male grizzly bear in Montana.

runo was born in January, blind and about the size of a Coke can. The first two months of his life were spent in complete darkness, nursing with his sister in his mother’s den, and by the time they dug their way out

When he left the den a second time, Bruno was 100 times bigger than he was at birth, and now, another year later, Bruno has reached the size of a small adult black bear. He and his mother live in the Porcupine Basin, near the southern

Bruno is one of about 2,000 grizzly bears living in the lower 48. Grizzlies in the contiguous United States once numbered over 50,000, roaming from the West Coast to the Great Plains and all the way down into the heart of Mexico. But after the arrival of European settlers, the species was decimated and confined to two geographic areas: the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem (GYE), which includes Yellowstone National Park and its surrounding areas, and the Northern Continental Divide Ecosystem (NCDE), a region of 16,000 square miles that runs from Glacier National Park all the way down to Lincoln, Montana—40 miles from the Porcupine Basin.

1,000 in the NCDE (there are also small grizzly populations in the Cabinet-Yaak ecosystem and the Selkirk Mountains in northern Idaho, but those are estimated at less than 100). Yet grizzlies only occupy a small fraction of their former range, and as of August 2025, grizzly populations in the NCDE and the GYE don’t overlap. Conservationists’ next big push is to unite them.

to be tolerant enough to permit that and promote that as well.”

Vital Ground is a land trust based in Missoula that conserves and connects habitat for grizzly bears and other wildlife. Through their One Landscape Initiative, they protect private lands in key connectivity areas through conservation easements, land purchases, and other methods to clear a path for grizzlies to retake their former range.

Our ultimate goal is to have one regionally connected grizzly bear population that’s resilient enough to sustain itself against continued human encroachment and continued climate change.

At their nadir, there were only about 700 grizzlies in the U.S., excluding Alaska. But aided by the efforts of conservationists, the species has made a comeback. Scientists now estimate that about 1,000 grizzly bears live in the GYE, and another

- RYAN LUTEY, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, VITAL GROUND

“That doesn’t mean there has to be a bear behind every rock out there, but the landscape has to be healthy enough to support a healthy population, and also humans have

y fall of the next year, Bruno is three years old and 40 miles south of his birthplace, walking along Lyons Creek north of Helena. He’s still not strong enough to compete with adult males for a mate, but in the direction he’s going, he won’t have to worry about that for a while. Bruno is moving farther and farther away from other grizzlies, and only a few roaming bears, mostly lone males like himself, occupy the landscape between him and the GYE, still a hundred miles away. To traverse that distance is a long shot, and yet Bruno presses on.

So far, grizzlies have expanded successfully from five of six recovery zones that were established by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in 1975 (the sixth, the Northern Cascades, no longer holds a viable population and only sees an occasional bear roaming south from British Columbia). Their return is one of conservation’s biggest success stories. But to achieve a regionally connected, resilient population, grizzlies still have a long way to go.

The reasons for male grizzly dispersal are varied. Evolution has endowed males with a tendency to move away from the area they were born to reduce inbreeding, but most don’t travel more than about 30 miles. Bears that journey further sometimes do so to avoid competition with other bears for food and mates, but why some “outlier” bears (which Bruno would be classified as) travel hundreds of miles from their birthplace is not always clear.

Right now, the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service estimates that only 62 miles lie between the southernmost edge of the NCDE bears’

range and the northernmost tip of the GYE. A motivated male could easily bridge that gap. So far, there haven’t been any documented cases of a grizzly doing so, but it’s only a matter of time. Still, lone males crossing over wouldn’t result in true connectivity.

For that to happen, female grizzlies would have to bridge the gap as well, and that will happen much more slowly. Females typically relocate only when bear populations become so dense that they must compete for food and range, and they don’t tend to cover the same distances that males do. Experts say this kind

of connectivity could happen in the next 1020 years, although it’s very hard to predict and will depend on many factors.

Reclaiming their historic range is not the only reason that conservationists want to achieve connectivity. It would also provide a genetic advantage. Right now, grizzly bears in the GYE are siloed off from the broader gene pool, and scientists are concerned that this could eventually lead to a loss of genetic diversity.

“If you think about genetic diversity, it’s kind of like having a big variety of building blocks that a population can draw from,” says Cecily Costello, the head bear biologist for Montana Fish, Wildlife, and Parks. “If there’s change in the environment in the future, and you have a lot of variety within your population, then at least some of those individuals will have the genetic traits to help adapt to that change.”

Costello says that while there is no immediate danger for the genetic health of Yellowstone’s grizzlies, bear biologists and conservationists are planning for the long term. Lutey from Vital Ground also says that grizzlies are an umbrella species, meaning that their health corresponds to the health of all sorts of other wildlife whose habitat overlaps with theirs. If grizzly bears roamed all the way from Lander, Wyoming to Alaska, it would be a sign of a healthy landscape.

But connection won’t be easy.

roar, a blinding flash, and a shining object whips away into the night. Bruno stands concealed in a thicket of chokecherries beside I-15, the second road he’s encountered so far. The passing cars are disorienting, but there are less now than when he first tried to cross the four lanes. That time he only made it a few steps onto the concrete before a projectile whizzed towards him and he scurried back into the bushes. But he’s ready to try again. Bruno exits the thicket slowly, swinging his head left and right and sniffing the night air. As he reaches the median, Bruno feels a sudden rush of wind. Another car whooshes by, but this time Bruno is safely to the other side, and he presses on into the darkness.

In order to bridge the gap between the NCDE and the GYE, a grizzly must run a gauntlet of human-created obstacles.

Highway 90 near Drummond, Montana over 50 times before finally making it over. Even a single highway can be very disruptive to a grizzly.

When you sit down and seriously look at a map, you quickly find out that the opportunities left to protect wildlife linkage are very few and far between, because people have so deftly inhabited and broken up the landscape.

- RYAN LUTEY

In the hundreds of years since grizzly bears roamed the continent, humans have been busy, and even for an adventurous male, navigating the web of farmland, ranches, towns, and roads between the two ecosystems is difficult. From 2020 to 2021, a bear dubbed Lingenpolter by the Montana FWP biologists tracking him tried to cross

Vital Ground is working to make passage easier for wandering bears like Lingenpolter. In the 2010s, the land trust organized roundtable meetings with biologists, grizzly bear managers, and land managers from several federal agencies to decide which areas they should concentrate on to connect grizzly habitat. The resulting report, published in 2018, identified 33 priority areas and 188,000 acres of habitat, scattered across the NCDE, GYE, and Cabinet-Yaak and Selkirk ecosystems, that would help grizzlies move across the landscape.

One priority area was the Ninemile Crossing, a 52-acre area along the Clark Fork River that connects the NCDE to the Bitterroot Ecosystem. Vital Ground

purchased the Ninemile in 2018 with the Yellowstone to Yukon Initiative, another habitat protection group, ensuring that a wildlife pathway used by grizzlies would remain undeveloped. Other habitat protection projects include Donovan Creek east of Missoula, Fowler Creek near the Yaak Valley, and Bismark Meadows in the Selkirk Mountains. All told, since Vital Ground’s founding in 1990, the land trust has helped protect over 1 million acres. Each purchase or conservation easement makes the landscape just a little more porous to allow more and more grizzlies to pass through.

But land protection is only half the battle. The second half of Vital Ground’s 2018 report focuses on conflict prevention, because as bears venture out from their recovery zones, some of them will inevitably cross paths with us.

t the age of four, Bruno has traveled over 150 miles from where he was raised. Most grizzlies roam thousands of miles in a lifetime, but those movements are usually limited to a specific region—Bruno is an explorer. His last move brought him from Elkhorn to the mountains east of Butte and down into the valley below, where he’s about to have his first real brush with civilization.

Bruno’s nose is stronger than a bloodhound’s, and it can detect an animal carcass from several miles away. It can also get him into trouble. Right now, it’s leading him to a garbage can tucked behind the garage of a home up in the hills, and his olfactory system is awash in the aroma of rotting fruit and chicken bones. It’s dusk, and as Bruno walks, he can see lights twinkling in the city below. When he nears the garage, he stops, ears pricked for any sign of danger, but he can’t resist the now-overpowering smells that promise him an easy meal. Within five minutes, the contents of the garbage can are strewn all over the concrete, and Bruno is munching on vegetable peelings when a door creaks open and the air explodes around him. He bounds away, back the way he came, reaching 30 miles per hour in his mad dash for survival. It’s a mile before he stops running.

Bruno is lucky. After that warning shot, he won’t be prying into more garbage cans any time soon. He’ll stick instead to mountains and densely forested areas, only traveling through human settlements when he must, and even then, going mostly by night. If he is to survive in this new landscape, he must adapt.

If grizzlies continue their recovery, human-grizzly conflict is bound to increase. Most of the bears in the lower 48 live in remote areas, like public lands or national forests, that are far from human settlements. This makes it easier for the two species to avoid each other, but as grizzlies spread further and further from their recovery zones, they will come into closer and closer contact with people.

“They’re expanding into a whole different sort of environment,” says Costello.

Costello runs a trend monitoring program through FWP, and she has documented “outlier” bears in places like the Big Hole Valley, the Elkhorn Mountains, and as far away as the Snowy Mountains near Lewistown. Many of these outlier bears are

cropping up near rural communities, ranches, and farms, and they pose a challenge to the people living there who aren’t accustomed to living with grizzlies. When they arrive, groups like Vital Ground want to make sure they aren’t rejected.

“We can protect all the habitat we want, but if the bears aren’t accepted out there on the landscape, it might be for naught,” says Mitch Doherty, the conservation director for Vital Ground.

Vital Ground has a grant program that awards money each year to communities that are deemed priority zones for reducing human-bear conflict. These efforts focus on promoting bear-safe protocol, like locking up garbage, eliminating the dumping of animal carcasses, and otherwise removing

attractants that could draw grizzlies into an area. This year, they also invested in a drone with infrared sensing for Montana FWP grizzly bear technicians in Conrad, Montana—the drone can detect grizzlies from the air and even haze them away from livestock or other human activities. Lutey says that Vital Ground’s goal is to get money into the hands of community members, so they can launch their own grassroots efforts to manage living with bears.

“We’re not there to tell them what to do,” says Lutey. “We’re there to offer incentivebased ways to live with grizzlies on their landscape, and we fully recognize that if there’s a bear that is too obstinate about it, those bears need to be managed.”

Erik Kalsta, whose family started ranching in the Big Hole Valley in 1896, has been dealing with bears on his property for decades. Their first grizzly appeared all the way back in 1982, when bears weren’t thought to have wandered that far from their recovery zones. In 2003, a young female arrived and scratched up some of their heifers before giving up to prey on elk, and in 2007, another young grizzly, this time a male, appeared on their ranch, but his worst offense was stealing the float ball from their remote water trough. Kalsta and the three other owners that share the property have adjusted some of their practices in response to the presence of grizzlies on the landscape. When animals die, they move carcasses to a remote area, and when one of them approaches a dense timber patch or heavily willowed stream bottom where bears like to hang out, they do so with caution.

“We know that there will be problems,

we absolutely know that, but at this point we are doing our best to manage around that,” Kalsta said. “We don’t want there to be problems, for our sake and the bear’s sake, but mostly for ours.”

Kalsta also works with Western Land Alliance as the program director for their Working Wild Challenge, which aims to address the challenges of ranching with wildlife. The program emphasizes collaboration, conflict prevention tools, compensating ranchers for killed cattle and other costs from grizzlies living on the landscape, and the occasional need for lethal control.

Kalsta said that while ranching is a lifestyle, it’s also a business: “they have to stay solvent for us to remain on the landscape.” Kalsta wants to ensure that ranches in grizzlypopulated areas remain financially viable so they’re not sold off and

fter six years of wandering, Bruno enters the McAtee Basin in the Madison Range, over 200 miles from where he was born. He’s not alone. With him is a younger female, a member of the GYE population, and the two are about to mate. Their offspring will carry a combinat`ion of their mother and father’s genes, one from the north and one from the south, and those cubs, with a little luck, will go off to have kids of their own.

The road for Bruno to get here was long and difficult, but others will follow. At first, they’ll be roving males, heeding their evolutionary charge to expand and explore. Then the females will come, slowly pushing out from densely populated areas to find food and raise their offspring. In time, grizzly populations from the northernmost tip of Alaska down to central Wyoming will connect as, one by one, the bears return to their old stomping grounds.

turned into subdivisions, which would effectively eliminate bear habitat.

As Kalsta says, there will be problems. But people like Costello and Lutey hope that through education and awareness, people will come to see the tradeoffs of living with grizzlies as worthwhile. “Our founder always says, ‘Where the grizzly can walk, the earth is healthy and whole,’” says Lutey.

I think people have respect for carnivores, but they always want them to live somewhere else. I think it would be nice if we started thinking of Montana and these Northern Rockies states as grizzly country, where we can live with them and not apart from them.

- CECILY COSTELLO

For now, that future is a fantasy. Grizzlies’ expansion will put them closer and closer to the settlements that humans built in the bears’ long absence, and it will be an uneasy homecoming. Reaching connectivity will depend on the work of people like Lutey, Costello, and Kalsta, as well as the collective attitude of thousands who may soon have to come to terms with the presence of grizzly bears on the landscape. But grizzlies will keep pressing out from their sanctuaries if we let them. It may not be long before the grizzlies come home.

Fischer Genau is a writer and filmmaker living in Bozeman. He enjoys active stretching, reading books outside, rain, Kettle Cornflavored Popcorners, and time with the people he loves. He works for Explore Big Sky as the Digital Media Lead.

Scanhere to viewoffers!

Rewilding the Northern Plains

Inside American Prairie

BY CLAIRE CELLA

hen people think about Montana,” Beth Saboe asks me, rhetorically, “where do you think they think of?”

A list tumbled out of our mouths in unison: the sweeping mountains of Glacier, the grand wildness of Yellowstone, the calm curves of the Madison River, the cities of Bozeman and Missoula nestled into rugged, forested valleys.

Arguably, however, somewhere else in the state is where Montana truly gets its moniker, “The Big Sky State,” she says. And that place is the prairie, or the Northern Great Plains, that stretches across the eastern two-thirds of the state.

Saboe grew up in eastern Montana herself, and “I can tell you that a sunrise or a sunset on the prairie is something spectacular and to be witnessed.”

That sentiment is part of a threepronged approach of American Prairie, where Saboe serves as the senior public relations manager. American Prairie, founded in 2004, is a nonprofit conservation organization dedicated to assembling one of the largest contiguous nature reserves in the United States. Within that reserve would lie Montana’s temperate grasslands — an ecosystem that, when healthy and intact, is rich with biodiversity, pristine wildlife habitat, and upholds our nation’s history.

American Prairie has adopted a unique conservation model, according to Saboe, weaving together land ownership to amass an eventual 3.2

million acres to manage for the benefit of wildlife and the public. (Years ago, conservation biologists determined 3.2 million acres, or 5,000 square miles of continuous land, was the amount needed to ensure the survival of a thriving, sustaining prairie ecosystem.)

To stitch together this patchwork of land, American Prairie buys private or deeded land to connect to existing public lands. Already, their reserve includes the Charles M. Russell National Wildlife Refuge, owned by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, and the Upper Missouri River Breaks National Monument, owned by the Bureau of Land Management, which together encompass nearly 1.3 million acres. Since 2004, American Prairie has grown its own habitat base to a total of 603,657 acres — 167,070 of which are deeded and 436,587 of which are leased public lands.

Once land is under American Prairie ownership, Saboe says, the organization moves to the other two prongs of its mission beyond land: wildlife and people. Restoring biodiversity and health to properties—what they call “rewilding”—as well as opening up access to the public, is high among their initial priorities. For example, their most recent acquisition in September 2025 — the Anchor Ranch in Blaine County, southwest of Havre, Montana — will be managed as critical wildlife habitat and will open up nearly 50,000 acres for public access.

Under their rewilding efforts, the organization’s team of specialists works to ensure that native vegetation and wildlife species — ranging from bison to black-footed ferrets to grassland birds — are present, as they would be in any resilient, diverse ecosystem. They undertake fencing projects to allow wildlife unencumbered movement through the vast landscape and manage hunter programs to maintain robust populations of elk, pronghorn, mule deer, and turkeys, among other species.

To do this work well, American Prairie is steadfast in their intention to be a good neighbor. They collaborate extensively with land managers, including private landowners and ranchers, the Bureau of Land Management, the State of Montana, the Montana Fish and Wildlife, the Montana Department of Natural Resources and Conservation, and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, as well as with the neighboring Indigenous communities of Fort Peck, Fort Belknap, and Rocky Boy. They host Wild Sky

ranching programs, which include Cameras for Conservation and Wildlife Friendly Lands that offer incentives to ranchers who adopt wildlifefriendly land management practices. American Prairie also owns a bison herd that grazes openly across several properties — and has helped redistribute hundreds more across the country — to restore the population (which numbered in the millions before the 1800s) to its historic habitat as a way of rehabilitating the land.

“We understand that being a big, audacious conservation project is not without its opposition,” Saboe says. “Big ideas like this are often met with skepticism and a fear of change. But we have a lot of support. Local landowners, other Montanans, and people from all over the country have become aware of what we’re doing and why.”

Maintaining the vitality of this mixed grass prairie ecosystem, however, has become more urgent than ever, Saboe explains. The Great Plains are one of only four intact temperate grasslands remaining in the world, including regions in Mongolia, Kazakhstan and Argentina. Grasslands are one of the least protected biomes, and, unfortunately, one of the fastest disappearing — faster, even, than the deforestation of the Amazon, according to the World Wildlife Fund. The ongoing threats to America’s grasslands include climate change, drought, development, fragmentation, and an ever-expanding agricultural industry that converts the prairie to cropland, said Saboe.

Saboe hopes more people will come to see the prairie for themselves, an ecosystem she thinks is often overlooked for the loftier peaks and rugged interiors of the West. But there

is something wild, remote and austere about the prairie, too, she insists, and over the years, American Prairie has worked hard to share the land and its stories with others — both locally, nationally, and internationally. In 2022, they opened the National Discovery Center in Lewiston, which features educational exhibits and programs. Their hut and campground system grants overnight or longer access to a diverse swath of iconic Montana landscape to explore, such as sagebrush steppe, riparian areas, rugged hills, and of course, the sweeping views of grasses rippling in the wind.

“The prairie is a place you should visit,” she encourages. “It’s not just a place you drive through or fly over. It’s teeming with life —all you have to do is look down at the beetles moving at your feet, the flowers blooming up out of the soil; look up at that never-ending sky; take a moment to sense what you’re smelling, seeing, feeling. The prairie is alive, and it offers us something different.”

Claire Cella is a freelance writer living in Lander, Wyoming. She’s written about issues across the West for various publications since 2017. Her day job is as a graphic designer for a conservation advocacy nonprofit. She’s a lover of poetry, trails on public lands, and most recently, birds.

This fall marks a remarkable milestone—twenty years of bison on American Prairie. Our herd, now over 900 in number, has already started to return and repair important ecological processes on the prairie. We look forward to the next twenty years.

To learn what you can do to support bison VisitAmericanPrairie.org

WILD ABOUT BISON

Winter Tracks

hen snow blankets Yellowstone, the landscape becomes a storybook of movement. Every track pressed into the snow is a clue—evidence of survival, hunting, or play. Winter is one of the best times to see which animals share the park with you, even if you never spot the creatures themselves. Here are some of the most common—and most exciting—tracks to keep an eye out for.

1. WOLF

Large oval paw prints with four distinct toes and visible claw marks often belong to wolves. Their tracks typically appear in a straight line as they conserve energy by walking with purpose. Spotting a wolf trail in fresh snow is a reminder that Yellowstone is still wild.

2. COYOTE

Smaller than wolves, coyote tracks can look similar but are usually daintier and more zigzagging. Coyotes often weave as they hunt for voles beneath the snow, leaving looping patterns that betray their playful, curious nature.

3. FOX

Look for small, catlike prints in a nearly straight line, sometimes ending with a neat crater where the fox has pounced into the snow. Red foxes are common in Yellowstone and their hunting style— listening, leaping, and diving—is written clearly in the snowpack.

ELK

Elk hooves leave large, heart-shaped prints that are hard to miss. In winter, herds often move together, so you might find whole networks of tracks winding through valleys or cutting across ridges where snow is shallower.

MOOSE 5. BISON

Massive, rounded hoof prints belong to Yellowstone’s most iconic residents. Often, you’ll see deep troughs in the snow where bison have “snowplowed” with their heads, searching for grass beneath the crust.

6. SNOWSHOW HARE

These tracks are like an exclamation point in the snow: large hind feet in front, small front feet behind. Snowshoe hares are abundant in lodgepole pine forests, and their tracks often crisscross wildly as they zigzag away from predators.

7. RIVER OTTER

Along streams and rivers, look for paired paw prints with belly-slide marks between them. Otters turn winter into playtime, often sliding down snowy banks or along ice edges, leaving whimsical patterns behind.

Moose tracks are larger and more oval-shaped than elk, with pointed ends. In deep snow, you may find long trenches where a moose has forged a solitary path through willows in search of browse.

WEASEL (ERMINE)

Tiny prints bounding in pairs often belong to ermine, whose white winter coats make them almost invisible against the snow. Their tracks lead in quick, energetic hops, often diving into snow tunnels after mice.

10. MARTEN

A cousin of the weasel, martens leave paired tracks with a bounding pattern, usually weaving among trees. Their playful gaits and woodland habitats make them a fun track to stumble upon in Yellowstone’s quieter forests.

he snowy canvas of Yellowstone is ever-changing, and tracks can blur in wind or sun. Carrying a small animal tracks guide—or snapping photos of prints you see—can help you identify Yellowstone’s winter residents long after your trip.

Standing among the steam, the stink, and the sounds of a restless Earth, it’s easy to let imagination take over. Could this be the home of a dragon? Are those deep, guttural groans the snores of something massive hiding in a cave below—waiting for the perfect moment to appear, breathing fire at all who dares to get close? One can’t help but wonder: is this where fire-breathing dragons live?

Just north of Yellowstone Lake, along Grand Loop Road, the Black Dragon’s Cauldron bubbles atop a small hill—a steamy pool of hot mud where a half-mile boardwalk guides visitors on a mysterious walk. Unlike many of the park’s ancient geothermal features, Black Dragon’s Cauldron is relatively new, having first erupted in 1948. The eruption was powerful enough to uproot trees, send black mud twenty feet into the air, and reshape the landscape in the process. The cauldron continued to experience such bursts for several decades before coming to a rest. Originally named “Demon of the Backwoods” by park rangers, it is easy to see why the rangers chose the name with the landscape hinting at a mythical layer living just below the surface.

Walking along the boardwalk, the rhythmic plopping and bubbling sound of boiling mud pots lures visitors further down the path to a pool of near-boiling water cresting the earth’s surface with enough force to create its own wave pool.

Where Dragons Sleep:

Geothermal Mysteries in the Mud Volcano Area

BY SARAH MAY

ucked on a hillside in Yellowstone, pools of murky gray water bubble to the surface. Water churns in geothermal pools. Billows of steam escape from cracks and crevices in the Earth’s crust, sending a foul smell akin to rotten eggs wafting into the air. The earth grumbles, hisses, and gurgles—hinting at a mythical world beneath the surface. It’s no wonder that this eerie, otherworldly landscape in the Hayden Valley has inspired the mythical names listed on the map—Black Dragon’s Cauldron and Dragon’s Mouth.

Walking past the gurgling geological features of the area along the boardwalk, a dense bloom of steam is spotted in the distance. A narrow creek of mineralstained water runs beside the path as the crashing sound of waves sloshing into the rocky sides of the pool grows louder. Suddenly, a steamy cavern appears, and a deep roar is heard emanating from within. The waves surge and retreat at the mouth of the cave. Small children approach with caution. It’s not the sound of water alone one hears. It’s something heavier, more alive. The water pulses, as if being pushed and pulled by a massive unseen force, like the slow, measured breath of something ancient lying just out of sight. With a dash of imagination, it is easy to believe a mythical creature slumbers just inside the cave.

From there,

take in the cavern’s eerie sights and sounds as steam billows into the air.

Steam billows into the air, curling and twisting with the breeze, while the ground beneath hisses and breathes. The smell of sulfur lingers in the air, sharp and unmistakable, reminding us that this land is still very much alive, rustling just beneath the surface.

Affectionately named Dragon’s Mouth, this geothermal feature is one of Yellowstone’s more scientifically fascinating features, as the hydrothermal activity is a result of water interacting with the underlying volcanic activity. In 1999, a mysterious geothermal event occurred that dropped the water’s temperature by 10 degrees and changing the water’s color from green to white. The cause of the change remains unknown and serves as a cautionary reminder of Yellowstone’s potential. One can’t help but wonder if the next big change is in the near future.

Perhaps more than any other place in the park, this geothermal corner of Yellowstone blurs the line between science and myth. With each hiss of steam and every bubbling burst of mud, the land whispers of ancient forces at work, both geological and mythical. From the violent birth of Black Dragon’s Caldron to the pulsing breath of Dragon’s Mouth, the hillside feels alive, as if some great creature stirs just beneath the surface. Whether guided by curiosity, science, or wonder, one thing is certain: this is not just a place you visit—it’s a place that leaves you wondering about the possibility of another world.

Sarah is a freelance writer calling Bozeman, Montana home, where the mountains and open skies fuel her creativity. Her stories are deeply rooted in the landscape of the West, drawing on the natural world to explore themes of place, wonder, and belonging. Visit sarahemay.com to learn more.

& DisputesDisplays

SEASONAL RITUALS OF THE WEST’S WILD MAMMALS & RAPTORS

August: Bison Battles Begin

“ …In a sudden clash of the titans, engulfed in dust, the bison bulls unleashed their displeasure between them. I coughed and choked with dust permeating the air and seeping into my car as the bulls came to a standstill. WOW! This was close, only feet from the car in what I thought would be two passive bulls who’d soon be passing by. Taking me by surprise, they unleashed their fury upon each other in an apparent “dispute.” And then, they calmly walk down the well-trodden slope and passed by the

front of my car as though it were just another day of letting each other know who the boss is! Meanwhile, my hands were shaking while my heart fell through the floor of the car…” Autumn is prime time for the mammal rut, with bison kicking things off in August. All summer, bachelor groups of these big mammals have been busy bulking up, gorging themselves to strengthen their bodies for the battles ahead. When the rut begins and the scent hits the air, it’s like a wild spell—

bulls, bucks, and rams lose all sensibility. Displays are often precursors to full-on fights, or“disputes,”whichhelpsavoidseriousclashesand injury between animals. In Yellowstone, a raised bison tail is a signal to watch closely. It can mean either discharge or charge, especially when two massive bulls are sizing each other up. It’s a warning in bison language, and to the viewer, to get ready to photograph some two-ton action.

September: ELK BUGLES & ANTELOPE GESTURES

Theear-splittingbuglefromthebullelksplinteredmyear drum as I stood photographing. Physically, I was more than 25 yards away, but the high pitched and elongated call can be heard from a mile away. During September, these sounds replace the deep grunts of bison. Bull elk are “on the prowl,” competing fiercely to gather and guard their harem of cows. Rut tactics are loud and showy: thrashing grasses, churning up mud, and urinating on their own hind legs to carry scent. Strutting regally with bits of grass and brush in his antlers like a crown, the bull bugles again and again, calling his harem. A powerful bugle may draw cows in, but they can also choose to go to another bull during this time. Herding large groups, sometimes nine cows or more, is exhausting work for a bull. It’s at this time that a dispute and displacement often takes place: a fresh, equally matched

bull who is similar in age and body weight may seize the moment to steal a few cows or take the entire harem from theexhausted“king.”Youngermalesmightofferachallenge, but “deferring” plays a role when they realize they are outmatched, a natural part of future breeding success. Deer and antelope also enter their rut during this time. The buck antelope approaches the doe with his head held high and slightly turned, signaling dominance with a subtle threat—“beobedient.”Adistinctivedisplayamongpronghorn is the flare of their bright white rump, which exposes scent glands that release a pungent odor. While typically used to raise an alarm in the face of danger, I’ve also photographed this display during the rut, while the males were herding females, suggesting it may have a role in courtship, too.

October: Moose in the Mood

Bull moose begin announcing their rut in October with short and deep grunts as they approach a cow. She, on the other hand, is quite the chatter box responding with long, groaning moans. The bull thrashes bushes and exhibits flehmen behavior, curling his lip to better detect her scent. Ahigher-pitchedwhiningsoundoccurswhentwodominantbullsapproach each other for a possible dispute. While fights can occur, much is often communicated through posture and sound.

Also in Autumn: Raptor Rivalries

Autumnisanelectricseasonfortheseanimated disputesoverterritorialpossession,whetherthatbea haremofelkcowsorafishcarcassbetweenraptors.

Seeing two differently aged bald eagles clash over a meal is just as riveting as any antlered showdown. Talons reach out, beaks snap like scissors,andsix-to-seven-footwingsslicetheairas theycollide.Withthelifelesscarcassflyingthrough

November: Ram Clashes and Rocky Rumbles

It’s mid-November and the clash sounds like colliding boulders. I scan the nearby rocky cliffs, straining to see the source. It is two Rocky Mountain bighorn rams locked in combat, nearly camouflaged against the gray-toned boulders.

They are noiseless with their romantic pursuit, until two mighty rams decide on the dominant hierarchy for a few of the ewes. When twopowerfulmalesdecidetotestthehierarchyforbreedingrights,the result is a thunderous headbutt. The big rams, like the other mammals, retrieve the scent of a female by licking and smelling the hind end. ThroughtheJacobson’sorgan,theyanalyzepheromonesanddetermine her reproductive status.

The rut brings a flurry of activity among the rams. When a male senses a receptive ewe, he presses his head to her backside and performsthe“flehmen”response,curlingtheupperlipbacktoexpose the teeth to better analyze her scent. If the female is ready for the romantic liaison, the delirious rams chase the females nonstop.

Meanwhile, the bachelor rams also form their own version of a “rugby scrum,” a tight cluster of males with heads together and white rumps facing out. This formation is a nonviolent way to assess dominance. Just photographing their own behavior with each other is entertaining.Eventually,adominantramwill“paw”theotherwiththeir hoofed leg and apply head pressure upon the lesser ram’s shoulder.

the air, mud is kicked up as the raptors squabble on thesandbar.Thefullymature,white-headedeagle becomes the victor claiming the delectable meal. Whateverthepossession,itishighlyprized.Most often these conflicts—avian or mammalian—are resolvedthroughdisplaysratherthanfull-onfights. In most cases, posturing and deferral preserves energyandpreventsinjury.Amonglargemammals,

success in the rut often hinges on body mass and the size of horns or antlers. The vicious action can lookbrutal,butthere’sastrategyinvolved:younger, inexperiencedmalesandolder,weakenedonesoften choosetodeferratherthandefend.Anotherseason awaits. Their time will come.

REGIONAL FOODS TO WARM YOU UP

After a Cold Day Exploring

After a brisk day spent exploring Yellowstone and its surrounding gateway towns, nothing beats warming up with hearty, regional flavors that showcase Yellowstone Country’s flavors. Whether it’s a bowl of elk chili or a huckleberry milkshake, these local favorites are the perfect way to shake off the cold and settle in.

Elk Chili

Served seasonally at Roosevelt Lodge in Yellowstone (summer), but in the colder months you can find a hearty elk chili at Yellowstone Beer Company in West Yellowstone or other local diners in gateway towns.

Milkshake

Even in winter, you can snag one at Clem’s Canteen & Creamery in Cody or Yellowstone Perk in Gardiner (yes, they’ll still blend it for you).

Cinnamon Rolls

The oversized, gooey ones from Running Bear Pancake House in West Yellowstone or Wheat Montana in Three Forks are worth the frost on your boots.

Cakes

Cozy up at Madison Crossing Lounge in West Yellowstone to try a bite of Montana-caught trout.

Hand Pies

Wild Crumb in Bozeman keeps them stocked with rotating seasonal fillings—perfect with a hot coffee.

Montana Whiskey or Hot Toddy

Sip Montana-made spirits fireside at Sage Lodge in Pray, Lone Mountain Ranch in Big Sky, or Chico Hot Springs near Livingston.

Wild Game Burger

In Gardiner, The Corral serves up elk, bison, and other wild game patties that hit the spot after a chilly day in the park.

STEAM, SNOW, & SPECTACLE