Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
the completion of a road rebuilding project in the 1960s, blocks of this hillside slipped in a
massive landslide that covered the road.
Nineteenth-century explorers dubbed this the First Canyon of the Yellowstone River.
Farther upstream, explorers found three other canyons cut by the Yellowstone, each more
spectacular than the one before. Second Canyon, located about 15 miles (24 km) north of the
North Entrance, is now called Yankee Jim Canyon. Inside the park boundaries are Third, or
Black Canyon, east of Gardiner (reached only by trail) and Fourth Canyon, the Grand Canyon
of the Yellowstone.
Paradise Valley,
so called since at least the 1880s, spreads out before you just as you
emerge from the canyon. On your left (to the east) are the Snowy Mountains, one of several
ranges that make up the Beartooth uplift. The highest peak visible from the valley is
Emigrant
Peak
(10,921 ft / 3,329 m). To the west is the more rounded eastern edge of the
Gallatin
Range.
Irrigation now helps overcome the low annual rainfall, making the valley hospitable
to farming.
Ten or twelve miles (16-19 km) from Livingston, near Mill Creek, you begin to see effects
of glaciers during the last ice age (the Pinedale), which was at its height about 25,000 years
ago. Some areas are covered with large boulders dragged there by the glaciers. East of the
highway and just south of Emigrant is a long terminal moraine, a mound of unsorted rocks
and soil left when a major Yellowstone glacier dropped them, much as a conveyor belt would
do.
The small settlement of Emigrant is about 23 miles (37 km) south of Livingston; at the
stoplight a road leads eastward to the tiny town of Pray and to Chico Hot Springs. Chico,
settled beginning in 1864, has a resort hotel established in 1900 that was sometimes used as a
clinic in its first 50 years. You might enjoy a plunge in one of Chico's two public pools supplied
with natural hot-spring water, or a meal in their gourmet restaurant.
Near Chico, at the mouth of Emigrant Gulch, the optimistically named Yellowstone City
had 300 settlers in 1864 and could claim the title of easternmost town in Montana Territory.
The settlers had all come as prospectors, so most moved on when the gold strike here petered
out.
It may seem strange that Yellowstone City could have been the easternmost town, but
Montana Territory was settled from west to east, unlike most U.S. states. The mining prospect-
ors, who were the first white settlers, could most easily reach Montana's mineral-rich moun-
tains from the southwest.
Mentioned frequently in histories of Yellowstone was the ranch settled in 1868 by the Bot-
tler brothers, located about 3 miles (5 km) south of the present site of Emigrant. Sometimes
