How the 1920s reshaped Wyoming and the route to Yellowstone Park

In the early 20th century, Yellowstone National Park was not set up as a place for everyday Americans to visit. It was a destination for the wealthy.

Imagine a trip from Boston to Yellowstone in the 1910s. The journey alone would take three to four days by train, and meals were not typically included. Travelers either brought their own food or purchased meals in dining cars or at station stops, often at considerable expense.

The rail line would carry visitors to Gardiner, Mont., the park’s northern entrance. From there, travel into Yellowstone required hiring transportation, guides and accommodations.

What was called “camping” in Yellowstone was anything but roughing it. Organized camp companies provided large canvas tents, full meal service and pack animals to move equipment. Staff handled nearly everything, including cooking, setup and even laundry, with personal services extending to comforts expected by upper-class travelers.

For those who preferred not to camp, the park also offered elegant lodges catering to the same wealthy clientele, often doubling the cost of a trip.

A five-day guided tour could cost as much as $1,000 in 1916, an enormous sum at the time, equivalent to roughly $30,000 today. Yellowstone was less a national playground and more a curated wilderness experience for those who could afford it.

Although private cars were first allowed into the park in 1916, offering greater freedom, they brought inevitable mishaps. Cars bogged down in mud, slipped into ponds, were swept down rivers or ran out of gasoline. Engine troubles turned into days-long delays.

That year, just 3,416 cars entered Yellowstone. Over the park’s 120-day season, that averages roughly two cars per daylight hour. During the closing years of the 1910s, travel to Yellowstone remained difficult. World War I and the “Spanish” influenza epidemic limited both the ability and desire of Americans to venture far from home.

Then came 1920. The war had ended, the economy was rebounding and wages were rising. For the first time, ordinary families had both the means and motivation to travel. That same year, Ford sold its four-millionth Model T, placing reliable transportation within reach of everyday Americans.

And when those families began to dream about where to go, one destination stood above all others: Yellowstone.

Long before theme parks and interstate highways, Yellowstone captured the nation’s imagination. Geysers, waterfalls, canyons and wildlife created a landscape so different from city and farm life that it felt almost mythical. For many, it was not just a vacation, but a once-in-a-lifetime journey into the American West.

But as the 1920s began, there was a striking imbalance in how visitors reached the park.

Although roughly 96% of Yellowstone lies within Wyoming, only a small fraction of early automobile visitors entered through Wyoming’s gates. By the early 1920s, most tourists came through Montana, funneled in by established routes at Gardiner and West Yellowstone. Estimates suggest as few as one in 15 visitors entered through Wyoming.

For Wyoming’s communities, that imbalance mattered.

Tourists did not just visit Yellowstone. They bought fuel, camped, stayed in hotels, ate in restaurants and spent money along the way. When those visitors entered through Montana, much of that economic activity stayed there. Wyoming had the park, but Montana had the business.

That reality did not sit well with Wyoming’s leaders or communities.

By the early 1920s, tourism was no longer a novelty. It was becoming an industry that could shape the future of towns across the state. Sheridan, Buffalo, Cody and communities throughout the Big Horn Basin began to recognize what was at stake. If they could draw travelers across Wyoming instead of around it, the benefits would extend far beyond the park.

There was just one problem. Getting there was not easy.

Crossing the Big Horn Mountains on horseback could take days. Wagons faced steep grades, sharp turns and unpredictable weather. For early automobiles, the journey was often impractical or impossible. The same was true of the route from Cody into Yellowstone, where travel over Sylvan Pass remained narrow, difficult and unreliable.

That reality shaped travel patterns in a way that favored Montana.

Rail lines and established routes made it easier to enter Yellowstone from the north and west. Even as automobiles began to replace rail travel, those pathways continued to draw most visitors. Wyoming, by contrast, remained harder to reach, especially for families traveling long distances in early cars.

Yet Wyoming held a quiet advantage. The routes that did exist, however rough, passed through some of the most dramatic terrain in the region. The Big Horn Mountains rose in high ridges and granite walls, with forested slopes and streams cutting through deep canyons that opened to sweeping views.

The route from Cody over Sylvan Pass wound through towering cliffs and narrow passages where travelers wondered how they would ever get through. And in Wind River Canyon, the space was so tight that even after a railroad line was blasted through the cliffs just 15 years earlier, there was barely room left for a horse path.

Those same qualities that made travel difficult also made it memorable. As automobiles became the preferred way to travel, an entire world of infrastructure was needed: campgrounds, motels, gas stations, diners, repair shops, road signs and snow removal.

By the early 1920s, Wyoming communities began to think differently about roads. Instead of local necessities, they became connections, links in a network that could bring travelers across the state.

Communities that might otherwise compete began to recognize a shared opportunity.

Sheridan, Lovell, Powell, Shell, Ten Sleep, Cody and other towns all stood to benefit if tourists could be drawn across the Big Horn Mountains and into the Basin. A traveler might buy fuel in one town, eat in another and spend the night in a third. The journey itself could become an economic lifeline for an entire region.

That idea began to take hold in town meetings, newspaper articles, legislative sessions and local efforts to improve roads.

“Co-operation was the watchword,” and over the next decade towns and cities from both ends of the state and both sides of the Big Horn Mountains all came together to solve the transportation problem, bringing the cars in. 

Buffalo Bill Cody had long believed his town should serve as Yellowstone’s eastern gateway, and even after his death in 1917, that vision endured. But vision alone was not enough.

If Wyoming was going to claim its share of Yellowstone tourism, it would need more than scenery. Roads had to improve, mountain crossings had to become reliable, and routes into the park had to accommodate automobiles, not just horses and wagons.

In short, Wyoming would have to build its way into the future.

That challenge would define the decade, reshaping not just how people reached Yellowstone, but how Wyoming itself was connected and promoted. In the years that followed, engineers, communities and state leaders would begin carving roads across mountains, turning rough trails into highways.

In many ways the 1920s set the stage for what Wyoming still does well today; build, cooperate and reimagine itself into something better while maintaining all the great things that have defined it for generations.  

In next week’s article, we’ll examine the dramatic engineering, economic and social challenges Wyoming had to overcome to compete to make Wyoming a tourist destination.