Gardiner and the Roosevelt Arch
Historic Site · Gardiner, Montana
A town of about eight hundred people on the Yellowstone River at the original entrance to Yellowstone, and the only one of the park's five gates open to cars all year. The Roosevelt Arch stands at the boundary — a fifty-foot basalt arch whose cornerstone Theodore Roosevelt laid in 1903, inscribed FOR THE BENEFIT AND ENJOYMENT OF THE PEOPLE, built so that visitors arriving by train at Gardiner had something suitably grand to pass beneath. Elk graze on the lawns in town and nobody finds it remarkable any more.
North Entrance Road, Gardiner, Montana, 59030, United States
The town and the Roosevelt Arch are free and open at all hours, with the arch lit at night — no park pass is needed to visit it. Gardiner is the ONLY Yellowstone entrance open to cars year round, and the road from here through to Cooke City is plowed all winter. A Yellowstone entrance fee applies to enter the park. Lodging books out completely for July and August and is cheap and available in winter, which is the town's best season for wildlife.
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