Forty-Five Miles to Yellowstone: The Summer Gateway
Near Big Sky, Montana
Big Sky's position on United States Highway One Ninety One makes it something more than a ski resort community. The highway runs south from Bozeman through the Gallatin Canyon, through Big Sky, and directly into Yellowstone National Park through the park's northwest boundary. This makes Big Sky the last substantial town on one of the main summer routes into America's oldest national park, and it shapes the town's entire summer economy.
Yellowstone was established in eighteen seventy two as the first national park in the United States. In summer, it draws more than four million visitors a year. Many of them travel south from Bozeman on Highway One Ninety One, and Big Sky is one of the last places for gas and a full meal before the park boundary.
In summer, when the ski resort is quiet, the town's businesses shift almost entirely toward serving park visitors passing through. The proximity to Yellowstone also puts Big Sky inside the greater Yellowstone ecosystem, the largest intact temperate ecosystem in North America. Grizzly bears range out of the park into the Gallatin drainage.
Wolves, reintroduced to Yellowstone in nineteen ninety five, have spread into the Gallatin Canyon and have been seen from the highway. The visitors who come to ski Lone Mountain in January sometimes come back in July for a different reason entirely, and they see a completely different landscape through the same windshield.
