Paradise Valley: The Approach From the North

The drive into Gardiner from the north runs fifty-three miles south from Livingston through one of the most photographed river valleys in Montana. This is Paradise Valley, named because the early settlers who entered it could not think of any other word adequate to the experience. The Absaroka Range rises immediately to the east, a wall of steep, reddish-brown volcanic peaks that are the eroded remnants of volcanic activity that reshaped this entire region millions of years ago. The Yellowstone River runs through the valley floor beside the road.

United States Highway Eighty-Nine follows the valley from Livingston to Gardiner, and for much of that drive the Yellowstone River is visible alongside the pavement. The river has cut deeply into the valley floor in some sections, forming steep banks and cliff ledges that hold golden eagles and prairie falcons. Hot springs emerge along the river's edge. Near the town of Emigrant, the valley narrows as the highway begins its final approach toward the park.

The section of Paradise Valley immediately north of Gardiner has been the focus of conservation efforts by ranchers and land trusts working to maintain wildlife corridors connecting the park's northern range to the broader landscape of southwest Montana. Elk, pronghorn, and mule deer move seasonally through these private lands adjacent to the park boundary. The Church Universal and Triumphant, a new religious movement that acquired a large ranch in the valley in the nineteen eighties, sold or placed under conservation easement roughly half of its ranch land beginning in the late nineteen nineties, adding thousands of acres to the protective buffer around Yellowstone's northern range. The valley is now considered one of the most significant wildlife movement corridors in the American West.