Yellowstone National Park North Entrance Reopens After The Summer Flood

Yellowstone National Park North Entrance reopened after flooding in early June. Heavy flooding caused by rain and quick melting of snowpack halted Yellowstone National Park visitors in early June from entering the North Entrance. 

According to the Yellowstone National Park website, Yellowstone National Park is visited by millions yearly for attractions like its beautiful scenery, geysers, hot springs, and wildlife. Yellowstone has scenery like none other with features such as a 109 foot tall waterfall and an Old Faithfuls geyser shooting water up to 18 feet in the air. 

On June 13th, Yellowstone National Park experienced extreme flooding washing out parts of the North Entrance. The North Entrance road leads to mammoth hot springs.  

It was the park’s 150th anniversary this year, and it was expected to be one of the busiest years to date, per Mail Tribune. The Mail Tribune also added that the urgent flooding caused the park and staff to evacuate and shut down temporarily. The whole park closed for a week and a half, After the week and a half, the park reopened just two of its entrances for the rest of the season, until the North Entrance opened back in October.

The popular North Entrance is the second busiest entrance of the entire park; 2,000 – 3,000 visitors on average come through the North Entrance every day in the summer according to Mail Tribune. The North Entrance is also the only road open in the winter.  It leads to the Mammoth Hot Springs Hotel as well as Lamar Valley, Cooke City, and Silver Gate.

All of the communities listed above were impacted and lost lots of revenue from the passing through tourists. Yellowstone National Park superintendent Cam Sholly said to Fox News, “For this flooding to happen in mid-June, going into a busy summer, it’s just catastrophic for some of these local economies. And for us to get these roads rebuilt and ready to go, not only for the winter season but going into next year especially, is absolutely essential and something we couldn’t have done by ourselves.” 

The rebuild of the road was no problem for HK Contractors Inc, It took them only four months to open the road back up. They worked on it seven days a week to reopen as soon as possible. It finally opened on October 15th with much-needed upgrades to the roadway. KSL News says that during this time they made updates such as adding 5000 feet of guardrails to the windy and narrow mountainous road. 

All the entrances are closed before November 8th except the newly rebuilt North Entrance. The north entrance is open year-round, and the other entrances open on the Third Friday of April for the summer season. Despite the park being open in April, services such as ranger stations, lounges, and rest areas will be closed. Roads over Colter Pass as well as Beartooth highway will also be closed until mid-May, if weather permits.