Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
in Gardiner. Also ask about recent bear sightings, since both black and grizzly bears live in
the area.
On U.S. 89, you'll leave Paradise Valley and enter
Yankee Jim Canyon.
Here you also enter
the
Gallatin National Forest,
which alternates with private land in checkerboard squares.
Between here and the town of Gardiner are a Forest Service campground, a picnic area, and
several river access points. Near the southern end of the 2.5-mile-long canyon are interpret-
ive signs about cutthroat trout and about the historic use of the canyon as Indian trail, wagon
route, railroad branch, and part of the 1912 to 1930 Yellowstone Trail.
To create Yankee Jim Canyon, the Yellowstone River has carved through volcanic rocks
to the very old Precambrian basement rocks below. James (“Yankee Jim”) George took over
the road-building job from a southern-born prospector named Henderson and was able to
blast enough rock to make the road through the canyon passable for wagons. From 1874 until
about 1910 he exacted a toll from all who passed by. You can see the old road clearly across
the river. In some places the old railway roadbed is also visible closer to the river.
The town of
Corwin Springs
used to have its own “plunge” or hot spring pool, using water
piped from La Duke Hot Spring to the south. Near here a 5,000-year-old hearth was found on
the Rigler Bluffs east of the river. Initially puzzled by the hearth's elevation and distance from
the river, researchers concluded that the river must have been dammed by landslides and that
Native American Indians must have camped along the edge of the resulting lake.
At Corwin Springs you may cross the bridge and continue to the park along a parallel dirt-
and-gravel road. That road passes the historic sites of the towns of Electric, which had ex-
tensive coal mines with an aerial tramway, and Cinnabar, which was the first terminus of the
Northern Pacific Park Branch Line. Cinnabar claimed to be the “capital of the United States”
for a few days in 1903, because President Theodore Roosevelt had left his train and commu-
nications center there while he traveled through Yellowstone. A few months later, the railroad
terminus was moved to Gardiner, and not long after, Cinnabar became a ghost town.
Heat over the Hot Spring
In the late 1980s, the Church Universal and Triumphant (CUT) began drilling into the La
Duke Hot Spring aquifer in order to heat a spa and buildings. La Duke Hot Spring and the
bottom of Devil's Slide are on the church's property. Since Yellowstone's geothermal sys-
tems may have some connections to underground systems outside the park, drawing off
