Daily Local News (West Chester, PA)
Park reopens after changes wrought by flood
WAPITI, WYO. » Hundreds of cars, trucks and recreational vehicles were backed up in long lines at entrances to Yellowstone National Park as it partially reopened Wednesday morning following record floods that reshaped the park’s rivers and canyons, wiped out numerous roads and left some areas famous for their wildlife viewing inaccessible, possibly for months.
Park managers raised the gates at three of Yellowstone’s five entrances for the first time since June 13, when 10,000 visitors were ordered out after rivers across northern Wyoming and southern Montana surged over their banks following a torrent of rainfall that accelerated the spring snowmelt. The cost and scope of the damage is still being assessed.
Some of the premier attractions at America’s first national park will again be viewable, including Old Faithful, the legendary geyser that shoots towering bursts of steaming water
almost like clockwork more than a dozen times a day.
But the bears, wolves and bison that roam the wild Lamar Valley and the thermal features around Mammoth Hot Springs will remain out of reach. The wildlife-rich northern half of the park will be shuttered until at least early July, and key routes into the park remain severed near the Montana tourist towns of Gardiner, Red Lodge and Cooke City.
It was unknown how
many visitors will show up in the flooding’s immediate aftermath, but the lines indicate many tourists stuck to their plans despite uncertainty last week about when it would reopen. License plates at the east entrance near Wapiti, Wyo., indicated they were from Indiana, Arkansas, Ohio, Colorado, British Columbia in Canada and other places. The first visitors going through didn’t have to contend with other
traffic, but they had to watch for marmots on the road.
Park managers had been bracing for throngs as the park celebrated its 150th anniversary a year after it tallied a record 4.9 million visits.
‘Once-in-a-lifetime trip’
Muris Demirovic, 43, of Miami and his 70-year-old mother arrived at the east entrance at about 5:30 a.m. Wednesday and were second in a line of dozens of cars. He and his mother, who is from Bosnia, were on a cross-country trip visiting national parks, and Yellowstone was at the top of their list.
However, when they arrived, it was closed due to flooding. Demirovic and his mother toured Cody, Wyo., went to a rodeo, walked some trails and visited a museum. They had planned to leave the Yellowstone area on Monday, but stayed when they learned the park would reopen this week.
“This is a once-in-a-lifetime trip for me and my mom, so I had to make sure she sees this,” he said.
To keep visitor numbers down while repairs continue, park managers will use a system that only allows cars with even-numbered last digits on their license plates to enter on even days, while vehicles with odd-numbered last numbers can come on odd days.
Groups of visitors traveling together in different cars are exempt from the license-plate system, as well as people with reservations at campgrounds and hotels in the park.
If traffic along the park’s 400 miles of roads becomes unmanageable, Sholly said officials will impose a reservation system to enter the park.
Along the road to Yellowstone’s south entrance in Wyoming, a long and slow-moving line of cars snaked along a road with a sign that had been flashing, “Yellowstone closed,”
for days, but on Wednesday alerted drivers that the park was open but with restricted access.
“We were hoping to be in at a decent hour but it doesn’t look like that’s going to happen,” said Gracie Brennan of Kentucky, gesturing to the line.
Brennan and two of her friends were going to Yellowstone as part of a tour of various national parks. They were supposed to be on the road Wednesday to the Badlands, but changed their plans.
“Old Faithful was the main thing I wanted to see, so if we can get there, which ever way we got to go, it doesn’t really matter,” Brennan said.