Yellowstone Historic Center in the original Union Pacific Depot / Donnie Sexton, Montana Office of Tourism
West Yellowstone, Montana
A Gateway Town Worth Hanging Around
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or more than a century, West Yellowstone has been the jumping off point for travel to Yellowstone National Park. At the turn of the 20th century, when fewer than 200 people called this town home, stagecoaches pulled by horse and trains by Union Pacific engines brought a good portion of the 15,000-20,000 visitors who toured Yellowstone each year. While there are no trains or stagecoaches to give you a ride into town, this gateway to Yellowstone exudes an honest and sincere Western charm, an easiness, comfort, and lack of pretentiousness that makes you say, “Yeah, I could live here.” There are other gateways to the national park, but West Yellowstone is the only one that shares its name with the park, a particularly binding connection. Not only do you drive down Yellowstone Avenue to enter the park’s West Entrance, but you can even walk or mountain bike a short way into the park along the Riverside
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ESSENTIAL FRIENDS + GATEWAYS
Trail. The trailhead is on the east side of Boundary Street, which, of course, is named for running along the park boundary. This trail offers a peaceful meander through lodgepole pines down to the bending Madison River and its trout fishery. (Biking is only allowed on some parts of the Riverside Trail and not all the way down to the river) With fewer than 1200 residents, and surrounded on three sides by national forests and the park on the fourth, West Yellowstone today isn’t too far removed from the outpost that welcomed UP trains in 1908. You can even spot a few bears in town, and some wolves, but they are safely housed at the Grizzly and Wolf Discovery Center, an educational facility that takes in grizzlies that otherwise might have been put down due to their encounters with people. Open 365 days a year, the center lets you safely view grizzlies and wolves and provides great interpretation on how they survive in the wild. Time has brought changes, welcome ones at that, to