Fourteen Years of Looking for a Name

The town at Yellowstone's west entrance lived under several names before it settled on the one it uses today. When the Oregon Short Line Railroad completed its line here in nineteen oh eight, the informal settlement adopted the name Yellowstone, which seemed logical given what it was adjacent to. That name caused postal confusion because of the multiple Yellowstone-related place names in the region, and the settlement also used Riverside for a period, reflecting its position along the Madison River. West Yellowstone was settled on as the official name in nineteen twenty.

Residents have never entirely embraced the full name. Local usage almost universally shortens it to West. A Montanan who says they are going to West needs no further explanation. That shorthand reveals something true about the town's identity. The name West Yellowstone locates the place entirely by its relationship to the park. It is a directional description rather than a name with its own independent meaning. It is as if the town had never quite finished introducing itself, stopping at the first half of a sentence that was always really about somewhere else.

The town was incorporated in nineteen sixty-six, late in its life by Montana standards. Many similar western railroad towns had incorporated decades earlier. The late date reflects how long the town's civic and commercial structures remained organized around the railroad and its corporate owners rather than around municipal self-governance. By nineteen sixty-six the passenger trains had already been gone for six years, and the town was ready, finally, to introduce itself on its own terms.