North America 2024
Day 24: Sunday 18 August 2024
Butte, Montana – Earthquake Lake – West Yellowstone
Yellowstone National Park
Coffee options at a gas station on the way from Butte to Yellowstone
The Lewis and Clark Caverns Tourist Info Office. We crossed the Continental Divide, and it is close to here that Lewis and Clark were forced to abandon their river craft. They had travelled from Illinois, using the Missouri River till they reached the Rocky Mountains at Missouri Headwaters. From here they trekked over the route we had taken from Lewiston, Idaho, across the Lolo Pass to Montana, but in the opposite direction. There are limestone caves stretching for a mile here, but Lewis and Clark did not visit them.
The wild west town of Ennis on the Madison River
Travellers along the route were in vehicles of every shape and size. Harley Davidsons are very popular, with roadsters looking as old as the biker image itself. But Americans like big, gas-guzzling vehicles: huge truck-like SUVs and RVs (recreation vehicles the size of semi-trailers).
This geological formation puzzled us until we reached Earthquake Lake, where we attended a lecture on the devastating earthquake just before midnight, August 17/18 1959. This could be a result of such an earthquake, sinking the ground many metres along a straight faultline.
The approach to Yellowstone National Park presents us with this stunning view of the Gallatin Range of Mountains.
This is the site of a devastating earthquake exactly 65 years ago. We arrived by chance on the sad anniversary, and attended a lecture by a seismology professor.
On the night of 17/18 August, 1959, while campers were sleeping by a quiet river in the Madison River Valley, an earthquake measuring 7.2 on the moment magnitude scale occurred, releasing energy equivalent to 38 Hiroshima atomic bombs, making it one of the strongest ever recorded in US history. 28 people were killed, buried alive under the landslide or carried away by flood waters as the Hebgen Lake overflowed its dam. Most of the bodies remain under the millions of tonnes of landslide rubble.
As a result of the earthquake, the Madison River was flooded and remains a lake. A graveyard of trees can still be seen, marking effectively where the original land had been.
On the way to Ennis, Montana
Heading toward West Yellowstone, Montana.
Enjoying the view on the way to West Yellowstone
The scenery as we passed between the Gravelly and Madison Ranges was truly stunning.
On the road between Butte and Whitehall
The countryside heading toward West Yellowstone
Travel Diary
We go on to the the Lewis and Clark Caverns State Park Tourist Information Office, where we have a pleasant chat with a lady receptionist (in fact, all the tourist office staff have been very friendly and informative), buy two fun t-shirts, before heading on to pass south between two mountain ranges, the Gavelly and Madison. At Ennis we discover a wild west town with shops and buildings lining a single street, like in the movies. We stop at a rest stop later, where we overhear a group of Harley Davidson advanced age gents and a tattooed woman boasting about their vehicles. We witness a hawk hovering before diving on its prey.
The scenery is stunning, and we arrive at the Earthquake memorial Information Office, on the actual site of the 1959 Hebgen Lake disaster. We find it is a day of extraordinary coincidences: first Holly and her family, and now we arrive on the anniversary of the disaster, with a geology professor just about to give a fascinating talk on the seismic background of Yellowstone. Fantastic!
After leaving this sad place, we reach West Yellowstone, a small touristy town close to the Wyoming border, which is also the entrance to Yellowstone Park. We have a buffalo burger for dinner and make use of a laundromat.