A couple of good reasons to visit Montana in winter

For the past three years, my wife Marcia and I have spent a month each winter volunteering at Yellowstone National Park's Heritage and Research Center in Gardiner, Montana. Why do this in the winter, you ask? The short answer is: because that's when we can get housing there.

The HRC is the repository for scientific and cultural resources at Yellowstone. You can find everything there from a bison skull or a volcanic rock to the copper plates that photographer F. Jay Haynes used to make the prints he sold to the park's early tourists.

We originally volunteered there in 2010 as part of a week-long Road Scholar service program. Our group helped the professional staff inventory, catalog, rehouse and organize their collections of Yellowstone artifacts. At the end of the week, the curator of the HRC offered us the opportunity to return. She said that if we came for a month during the off season, she could arrange Park Service housing for us at Mammoth Hot Springs as long as we would commit to working four days a week for four weeks.  That seemed like a good deal to us, and we've returned during each of the past three winters.

Yellowstone's a wonderful place in winter. The steam that vents from the thermal features at Mammoth really shows off when the temperature gets below freezing, and the park's herds of bison, elk, pronghorn and bighorn sheep are constantly on the move in search of grazing areas. We rarely make the 15-minute drive between Mammoth and Gardiner without seeing wildlife.

By now you're wondering, where's the railroad angle?  For starters, the HRC library, where we spend roughly half our working time during our volunteer stints, is decorated with enlarged copies of Yellowstone-themed advertisements and timetable art from Northern Pacific, Milwaukee Road and Union Pacific. After all, in its earliest years, Yellowstone depended on the railroads to bring in the tourists, and Northern Pacific in particular was instrumental in getting some of the earliest park facilities built.

More signficantly, the HRC is a stone's throw from the site of the former NP station in Gardiner. The station, designed by architect Robert Reamer (who was also responsible for the Old Faithful Inn), was located near the Roosevelt Arch at the northwest entrance to the park. Unfortunately, the depot was demolished in 1954, but there is a proposal to reconstruct it following Reamer's plans, as part of a larger project to improve the roads and other facilities at this gateway to Yellowstone. Here's a detail from a piece of NP artwork showing the depot and the arch.

The photo below, taken from the second floor of the HRC building, looks toward the arch. The building in the lower right corner stands on the former site of the NP depot.

NP reached Gardiner in 1903; the railroad's Yellowstone branch extended 54 miles from the main line connection at Livingston. Passenger service on the branch ended after World War II, and the line was abandoned in the 1970s, except for a spur at Livingston that serves a lumber mill.

But for many miles the right-of-way remains clearly visible, running parallel to U.S. Highway 89. In the image below, taken about half a mile north of Gardiner, the right-of-way can be seen at the far right, carved into the west bank of the Yellowstone River. The HRC is the large building to the right of the Roosevelt Arch.  (There's not much snow in either of these pictures because March 2012 was a very dry month in Yellowstone.)

But wait – the railroad aspect of our winter sojourns at Yellowstone gets better.  We have three days off each week, and while we've spent some of them in the park (driving out to Lamar Valley in the northeast corner of the park to see wildlife, or taking the snow coach to Old Faithful), we often travel to Bozeman, about 90 minutes from Gardiner, on our days off. Bozeman is home to Montana State University, and it has plenty of shops, restaurants and other attractions. Livingston's an appealing town, too, and yes, we've stayed in the Murray Hotel there, but Bozeman has more going on.

So, as you may have guessed, aside from the appeal of Yellowstone itself, and being reminded every day of how closely the park's history is tied to that of the western railroads, another good reason to visit this part of Montana in winter (or any season) is the opportunity to get a close look at Montana Rail Link between Livingston and Bozeman. Livingston is home to MRL's major shop facility, and it's also the base for the helpers that assist trains over Bozeman Pass.

Since we've been going there, those helper sets have generally consisted of two SD70ACe units spliced by a rebuilt SD40, or what MRL calls an SD40-2R. They mainly help coal and grain trains going west, and I've seen them assisting eastbound manifest trains too, especially those heavily laden with forest products and reefers full of Washington state produce en route to the east. I imagine that they help heavy eastbound doublestack trains, too. Here's a mid-train helper on a westbound coal train, near the I-90 Trail Creek Road exit on the west side of Bozeman Pass:

Westbound trains often have to wait at Livingston for helpers to return from the top of the hill, or for eastbound trains to clear the single-track line between Livingston and Bozeman Pass (there are sidings just east and just west of the Bozeman Pass tunnel that are often used as meeting points, too). If you're hungry, grab a bite to eat at Gil's Goods in the Murray Hotel at Livingston, and you'll be able to keep an eye on the action.

It's only 25 miles between Livingston and Bozeman, but photo opportunities are plentiful, especially with slow-moving uphill trains. Even though Interstate 90 replaced former U.S. Highway 10 decades ago as the main route west out of Livingston, there are pieces of old U.S. 10 still in place just west of Livingston and east of Bozeman, off the I-90 Jackson Creek Road and Bear Canyon Road exits.

I've put some of my MRL photos into a Picasa web album. And if you want to know more about Yellowstone in winter, check out our travel blog.

Finally, there are two good books you can refer to for more information about rail service to Yellowstone: Thornton Waite's Yellowstone by Train, and The Northern Pacific Railroad and Yellowstone National Park, by Phyllis Smith and William Hoy. The latter has lots of photos and maps of the NP Yellowstone line, the Gardiner depot, and Robert Reamer's other contributions to the park.

So there you have it: two good reasons to visit this part of Montana in winter, Yellowstone and Montana Rail Link. You may find others, but those two are good enough for me.