US-89: Paradise Valley to Yellowstone
Livingston to Gardiner up the Yellowstone River: the 1902 railroad depot, Paradise Valley between two ranges, Yankee Jim Canyon, the Devil's Slide and the park's year-round gate.
The Route at a Glance
Livingston grew up as the Northern Pacific's gateway to Yellowstone, and its depot, finished in 1902 in red and yellow brick, met the trains until passenger service ended in 1979; the city keeps it now as a museum. From here a branch line ran south up the Yellowstone to the park, and US-89 follows the same river through Paradise Valley, between the Gallatin Range on the west and the Absarokas on the east.
The valley is ranch land and fishing water. Rudyard Kipling rode the branch line in 1889 and was told by a stranger on the train to get off at Yankee Jim's for the trout. Yankee Jim was James George, a Bannack prospector who in 1873 took over a road through the canyon now named for him and charged everyone bound for the park a toll, until the railroad laid its tracks over his roadbed in 1883 against his protests. The canyon is a short run of whitewater now, rafted every summer, with the highway and the old rail grade squeezed beside it.
Beyond the canyon, Cinnabar Mountain carries the Devil's Slide, a red stripe of tilted rock the Washburn party named in August 1870; miners had taken the color for mercury ore. The branch line ended for twenty years at Cinnabar, a town that vanished once the tracks were extended to the park boundary in 1903. US-89 runs on to Gardiner and the stone arch at the north entrance, the one Yellowstone gate open to cars all year.
The Drive, Stop by Stop
2 stops along the route, in driving order from Livingston, Montana to Gardiner, Montana. One of them sits off the road itself — the distance is noted on each.
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That's the drive. Take your time, pull over often, and let US-89: Paradise Valley to Yellowstone do what it does best.
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