Just over four months after catastrophic rains and floods shut down Yellowstone National Park for the first in decades, the park is back, with 99% of its roads open to visitors and only one entrance point still under construction.
The June floods, resulting from melting snow and unprecedented amounts of rain, washed out roads and triggered rockslides and erosion in the park, which lies across parts of Montana, Idaho and Wyoming.
After the National Park Service evacuated the park for safety and closed it to visitors, they surveyed the damage and found that with the worst concentrated in the north area, they could partially re-open the park to summer visitors. The re-opened southern portions, however, had visitor limits.
Over the four months, construction crews focused on the most-damaged areas in the north, including the Northeast Entrance Road near Cooke City and Silver Gate, Montana. With that open, the work is now focused on the last blocked entrance, the Old Gardiner Road at Gardiner, Montana, which provides access to Mammoth Hot Springs. Officials hope that last entrance can be repaved and open by November 1st.
