Yellowstone National Park flooding deals blow to nearby gateway communities
Flooding at Yellowstone National Park is dealing a blow to surrounding communities. Park closures and a lack of tourists are leaving residents and businesses struggling.
Businesses and residents near Yellowstone National Park eagerly awaited summer 2022. The park, which attracts more than 4 million visitors annually, had reopened after intermittently closing during the pandemic, and tourists were expected to once again descend upon the gateway communities near the park’s main entrances.
Instead, historic flooding inundated the region over the weekend, prompting Montana Gov. Greg Gianforte to declare a state of emergency and forcing 10,000 visitors to flee as surrounding communities wondered how they would rebuild after yet another setback.
“It’s been very, very difficult and very stressful,” said MacNeil Lyons, owner and lead guide of Yellowstone Insight, which offers year-round tours of the national park. “I feel like I’ve aged a lot in the past three years.”
Lyons’ business is based out of Gardiner, Montana, one of the areas hardest hit by this week’s flooding. He watched as a house was swept away into a roaring river and was stranded in Gardiner for two days, waiting for the water to recede and roads to reopen so he could reunite with his family in Bozeman, where he lives most of the time.
Yellowstone National Park closed on Monday, and it remains unclear when the park will reopen in its entirety as the full scale of damage continues to be assessed.
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