Yellowstone National Park gets $22M grant for road, pedestrian safety construction

The north end of where the project will take place. (Photo by Blair Miller, Daily Montanan)

YELLOWSTONE NATIONAL PARK — Federal Highway Administrator Shailen Bhatt was in Yellowstone National Park Tuesday to announce a new $22 million grant to widen the road and add parking and a pedestrian trail in a canyon south of Mammoth that Bhatt and park officials say is key to movement between the north and south sides of the park.

The project at Rustic Falls was one of five Bhatt announced Tuesday that will receive $88 million total in Nationally Significant Federal Lands and Tribal Transportation Program grants from the Federal Highway Administration as part of President Joe Biden’s Bipartisan Infrastructure Law.

The agency also announced $20.5 million in Tribal Transportation Program Safety Fund grant money was going to 80 projects on tribal lands, including about $1.9 million that will be heading to infrastructure projects on the Fort Peck, Rocky Boy’s, and Blackfeet reservations.

“Part of our challenge as a nation is that much of our infrastructure was designed in the 20th Century for traffic volumes, and particularly, the climate of the 20th Century. We’re just getting rain events, these 500-year floods, that don’t happen every 500 years; they’re happening on a regular basis,” Bhatt said. “…We do need forethought; we do need a plan. So, whether it’s the new bridges that are going in through the work that we’re doing together, or this project, we do need to build infrastructure for the 21st Century.”

The $22 million grant will go toward the project near Rustic Falls and involve replacing and widening about 0.7 miles of road, adding larger parking lots in the area and a pedestrian trail protected from drivers, and blasting a large rock wall on the west side of the road to alleviate rockfall hazards.

Department of the Interior Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary for Policy, Management and Budget Joan Mooney said including the funding announced Tuesday, there have so far been nine projects funded to the tune of $375 million in Yellowstone National Park, including three focused on bridges and roads, under Biden’s “Investing in America” agenda .

Yellowstone National Park Superintendent Cam Sholly said the viaduct and road in the project area were one of the original stagecoach roads in the park built in 1885 in an area known as Golden Gate. It was rebuilt in 1900, 1933 and again in 1977, but has stayed largely the same for the past nearly 50 years.

Sholly said an earthquake in 1959 brought down tons of rocks across the road and severely damaged it, and the goal of the project is to remove about 98,000 tons of rock that sits more than 100 feet high on the side of the road to make it safe for drivers and make the falls a more pedestrian-friendly and accessible site.

“As all of you know, we live basically on a volcano. Lots of earthquakes; lots of ground moving. And the potential for this is very high in the upcoming years, so the timing of this could not be better, as far as getting this critical work completed,” Sholly said.

The project is expected to take three years to finish, with contract bidding beginning next summer and construction starting in the fall. Crews plan to do most of the work between Labor Day and the start of the winter weather season, according to Dan Rhodes, the project manager and landscape architect at Yellowstone National Park.

There will be lane closures and full road closures at times, Sholly and Rhodes said.

Sholly said the project between Norris and Golden Gate is “a lot of money for a small amount of mileage” but a “top priority from a safety perspective.”

“I think this is greatly going to improve visitor experience and safety, as I said. It’s also going to create some accessibility for visitors from an (Americans with Disabilities Act) perspective,” Sholly said.

He said after seeing a near-record 4.5 million visitors last year, the park is on pace to “substantially exceed” that figure this year, and that the park has been wanting to address the stretch of roadway for years. He and Bhatt said as millions continue to flock to national parks like Yellowstone each year, the need to continually be addressing infrastructure is paramount.

“As much as the investments have made a huge difference in what we’re doing here in the park, I also want to reiterate that the job is never finished,” Sholly said. …There’s always going to be work to be done. And as we see visitors out here driving back and forth enjoying this place, we have a responsibility to do the very best that we can to improve and continually maintain that infrastructure.”

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