Down the North Fork of the Shoshone to Cody, Wyoming: August 1-2

Yellowstone’s East Entrance is the last of the Park’s five entrances for me to get to. It leads to Cody, Wyoming fifty-five miles and 3,500 feet below Sylvan Pass. We spent last weekend exploring the area, making new discoveries of amazing geology and wonderful American history. 

East Entrance Road winds through another unblemished expanse of Yellowstone. A vast forest of lodgepole pine; thirty miles of Yellowstone Lake seen from Lake Butte Overlook (Grand Tetons on the horizon sixty miles away); Sylvan Pass sitting at 8530 feet elevation (few trees left this high up). Snow will close the road in early November, won’t reopen til next May.

Buttes along U.S. 20, Shoshone National Forest

Big Land, Big Sky

Once outside the Park, it’s a fast downhill run into the Shoshone National Forest, the nation’s first. Buffalo Bill Cody called it ‘the gem of the Rockies.’ Lying in the rain shadow of the Continental Divide, its parched brown, sparsely vegetated landscape is shocking to Eastern eyes, disappointing at first after Yellowstone’s pine forests. Then, Shoshone’s geology comes into focus. Rock…everywhere; hewn by ancient volcanos and inland seas, timeless wind and water erosion. Massive buttes thrust upward taking thick layers of ancient sedimentary rock with them, testament to the incredible geologic forces that once ruled the Earth. Majestic hoodoos, craggy ridgelines in all shapes and hues. And it’s huge, a vast expanse scarcely penetrated by trail and two-track. It is true backcountry here; lots of it accessible only on foot or horseback. Elk, mule deer, bighorn sheep and bear abound. 

As General MacArthur once said, "I shall return."

Across this dry, rocky expanse runs a narrow band of water, the North Fork of the Shoshone River. It is a thin green ribbon thrown across a sea of brown. Just outside the Park boundary, it’s already another nonstop river born high up in the Rockies and in a hurry to get to the bottom. As arid as the landscape is, the North Fork’s flow is incongruous, still running strongly in August. Deep, long runs of slate green water lie below cascading riffle sections. A commitment forms in my mind to fish here someday. 

Stunning collection of Western art, part of Buffalo Bill Historial Center

Cody, Wyoming (population just 30,000) is named, of course, after Buffalo Bill Cody (1846-1917). A world-class museum in town (and I do mean world-class; www.bbhc.org) captures the life and times of an amazing man living in an amazing time in American history. Wagon trains, Pony Express, Gold Rush, Civil War, buffalo hunter, Indian fighter, international showman (rock star status in his time with tours of New York, Paris, London), visionary developer/investor in Wyoming’s Bighorn Basin. Paralleling his world-wide fame and fortune was his tragic personal life. We just scratched the surface of this five-wing museum. After dinner, Heidi took in Dan Miller’s Cowboy Music Revue. I took in Main Street’s sight, sound, motion as evening descended upon this iconic western town. 

Heart Mountain Interpretive Center & Memorial outside Cody

Next day, we drove fifteen miles out of town to Heart Mountain, site of one of ten internment camps built to incarcerate 120,000 Japanese Americans when the Pearl Harbor attack started WWII. Two-thirds of them were American citizens, stripped overnight of their personal property and thrown behind barbed wire. Over 14,000 lived at Heart Mountain, Wyoming 1942-45 until the Supreme Court ruled it unconstitutional. A great museum and memorial here tell this incredibly complex story of racism, war hysteria and failed leadership on one hand; of self-determination, community spirit, and patriotism on the other. Incredibly, 800 left the internment camp to serve in the Armed Forces and fight in Europe. A special exhibit about the lives of Muslim-Americans draws current relevancy to this piece of American history. 

Atop Buffalo Bill Dam on the North Fork of the Shoshone River

We stopped at the Buffalo Bill Dam Visitor Center on the way home. It’s where the North Fork of the Shoshone comes to a screeching halt behind what was the highest dam in the world when it was completed in 1910. An astonishingly small plug of concrete in the river’s narrow canyon gap forms a life-giving reservoir of 650,000 acre feet of water. Here is the story of how major federal water projects transformed near-uninhabitable land through irrigation and hydroelectric power. It’s a mandatory stop for anyone who questions the ability of federal projects to create jobs and energize commerce. Now, we shall see whether climate change shall undo these miracles of the 20^th Century across the American West. In the meantime, cities flourish and the alfalfa fields grow lush and fragrant in the once-arid Bighorn Basin.