West Yellowstone, Montana

West Yellowstone exists because a railroad needed passengers. The Union Pacific extended a branch line to the western edge of Yellowstone National Park in nineteen oh eight, breaking the Northern Pacific Railroad's twenty-five-year monopoly on park access. A temporary depot went up that year, replaced in nineteen oh nine by the permanent Union Pacific station, a handsome building designed to blend with the park's rustic architecture.

The trains brought tens of thousands of visitors each summer through the nineteen twenties and thirties, and West Yellowstone grew up to serve them with hotels, outfitters, and guides. Passenger trains eventually stopped coming, with sources giving dates from nineteen sixty to nineteen seventy-one. The town survived the transition by serving automobile tourists instead, and it now functions as the main western gateway to the park year-round. The old depot became the town's museum. The park's west entrance sits right at the edge of town.