Stacey Orsted, owner of the Wonderland Café & Lodge in Gardiner, has been preparing for a busy 2022 peak season.
Tourists flocked to Yellowstone National Park after the entrance gradually reopened during the pandemic, setting visit records at the time. The increase in visitor numbers has not only continued, but has continued to increase — 2021 is the busiest year in the park’s history, with an estimated 4.86 million recreational visits.
Local business owners like Orsted are watching the numbers closely and are banking on another busy year.
“Local businesses are doing really well in 2021, so we’re investing,” Orsted said.
Then, in June, historic flooding in and around Yellowstone National Park damaged park infrastructure and washed away sections of Yellowstone’s North and Northeast Entrance Roads.
Tourists had to evacuate and the park was temporarily closed. The park quickly reopened the west, south and east entrances to the public, and allowed vehicles to access parts of the interior of the park.
But the park cannot immediately reopen the north and northeast entrances near Gardiner, Cooke City and Silvergate. Gateway towns are cut off from parks, and tourism trending businesses have been planning to flip.
“I invested in staff housing. I knew a tour guide company that bought more tour buses and land. Suddenly they were in debt and had no tourism,” Orsted said.
After the flooding, a massive bid was launched to restore access to the northern part of the park. But for weeks, local business owners, Gateway residents and tourists were unsure of what to expect.
“When we first saw the video of the road (damage), we thought, ‘We’re not going to be able to work for years,'” said Nathan Varley, co-owner of wildlife viewing outfitter Yellowstone Wolf Tracker.
Crews had to quickly repair the road and build a new route from Gardiner to Mammoth Hot Springs. But local businesses that rely on tourism face an uncertain summer.
Workers repaired the northeast entry road ahead of winter, and the route reopened to normal traffic in mid-October. A few weeks later, crews completed improvements to Old Gardiner Road, which opened to the public on October 10. 30.
After six months, most businesses are barely getting by. They are now focusing on the “peak season” that is taking shape and hope to return to high traffic next year.
Historically, the park funneled millions in tourism dollars to its surrounding cities and counties.
In 2021, 4.86 million Yellowstone Park visitors spent more than $630 million in gateway economies surrounding the park, such as West Yellowstone and Gardner Park, according to a 2022 report by the National Park Service and the US Geological Survey.
This is the most ever spent by tourists, surpassing even pre-pandemic levels.
It was too early to determine the economic damage from the flooding, said Robin Hoover, executive director of Montana’s Yellowstone National Tourism Area, a nonprofit supported by the state tourism board that promotes regional tourism. Investigation work and data collection are still ongoing.
Yellowstone’s monthly visitor numbers could be some indicator of the economic damage. The park saw a 36% drop in visits in October compared to October 2020.
However, it did increase by 36% compared to the number of visits recorded in October 2019, the last year before the COVID-19 pandemic.
Overall, the park received about 3,246,700 recreational visits through October, down 32% from the same period in 2021, according to park statistics.
Another early indicator of lost revenue is the state’s lodging facility use tax, or bed tax.
The 4% bed tax is levied on guests of hotels, B&Bs, guest ranches, resorts and campgrounds and can give you a peek at what dollars are being spent in gateway towns.
Between July and September, Gardner saw a 92% reduction in bed tax revenue compared to the same period in 2021. Bed tax revenue for the three months totaled $29,140.
Compared to 2021, Park County (which also includes Cooke City, Silvergate, and Livingston) saw a 27% decline during the summer months.
Hoover said Gardiner, Cooke City, Silvergate and their tourism-dependent economies will suffer the most from tourism due to flooding.
Even Red Lodge, which suffered more flood damage than other towns this spring, appears to be recovering more quickly than Gardiner, Hoover said, based on indications from the bed tax.
“Recovery is never as fast as the broken parts of things,” Hoover said. “There has been steady progress and we are certainly looking forward to the spring and summer visits.”
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On July 13, park officials opened the road under construction between Gardiner and Mammoth to business guides and outfitters.
Although access is limited, guides can take visitors inside the park.
Varley of the Yellowstone Wolf Tracker said that’s when his business started to pick up.
“Things started to happen slowly and we (the guides) had some advantage because they were the only way to get into Gardner Park,” Valli said. “August got better. September was almost back to normal for us, even with limited access.”
Bookings for next year have already started, he said.
“Not everyone in town is doing well. The guide companies are lucky,” Valli said.
Hotels and restaurants are having a harder time.
Orsted, who owns both a café and a small hotel, said tourism to Gardiner this summer has been shaky, even as the town tries to rebrand itself as a destination rather than a gateway.
“We’d have three or four days of sales just barely enough to cover day-to-day operations, and then suddenly it became very busy,” Orsted said.
For Grizzly Grille owner Jeremy Baker, business never really got better. He estimates his business will be down about 75% this year.
He hoped for a busier winter and said local support was encouraging.
“There are a lot of local Montanans who come by, and most of my business is people from other towns stopping by to support the community,” Baker said.
Hoover said local partners such as the state tourism board, including the Yellowstone Tourist District, and the Chamber of Commerce worked quickly to spread the word about flood-affected areas and will continue to do so.
Because the floods have drawn so much national media attention, Hoover said it’s been difficult to “dispel that negative perception” that Gateway communities are closed due to flooding.
Hoover said they worked hard to promote the winter season and began to promote other seasons to attract more tourists.
With a lot of snow already on the ground, Hoover said she expects the park to have a good winter, which should trickle down to the Gardiner, the only entrance open to vehicle traffic year-round.
Orsted said her six cottages have seen a flood of cancellations throughout the summer, but bookings have picked up for winter and next year. The Mammoth Hot Springs Hotel won’t be opening this year, and both Hoover and Orsted said they were optimistic it would mean more people spending the night at the Gardiner.
Richard Parks of Parks Fly Shop, who converted his fly shop into a cross-country ski and snowshoe rental shop during the winter, is hopeful for the colder months, saying winter is “already winter.”
“It’s not a huge season, but it’s cash flow enough to cover immediate expenses,” Parks said.
But like most Gardiner residents, Parks is optimistic about next year.
“With the roads reopening, … next summer it looks like we’ll be back in business,” Parks said.
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