Through Absaroka Country
The Road from Sheridan to YellowstoneThrough Absaroka Country
The Road from Sheridan to YellowstoneIn 1939, a street commissioner named A.R. Swickard called a meeting at the Sheridan Rotary Club, drew a map on a table, and declared that northern Wyoming, southeastern Montana, and western South Dakota were tired of being ignored by their state capitals. He appointed himself governor of a new state — Absaroka, pronounced ab-ZOR-ka, a Crow word meaning "Children of the Long-Beaked Bird." He chose Sheridan as its capital. He printed 1,000 license plates at Sheridan Iron Works calling Absaroka the "Playground of the Nation." He minted coins. He held a Miss Absaroka pageant. The proposed state would have contained Yellowstone, the Bighorn Mountains, Devils Tower, the Tetons, and Mount Rushmore.
It never happened. Swickard got his meeting with the Wyoming governor, federal money started flowing north, and the whole thing quietly dissolved when World War II arrived. But the Sheridan Iron Works sign still stands. And when you drive west out of Sheridan toward Yellowstone, you're driving through the heart of what would have been Absaroka country — land that has always felt more like its own thing than a corner of anywhere else.
This is that drive. Not a highway between two destinations. A journey through a place that almost became something entirely its own.
Sheridan, Wyoming
The would-be capital of AbsarokaSheridan is my favorite place in the world. It's the place I look forward to returning to regardless of wherever I am. It's the place where slow Sundays still exist — where small businesses take the day off and quietly force you to do the same. There's a particular kind of peace in a town that still observes that rhythm.
What surprises people about Sheridan is how much history lives here without making a spectacle of itself. The Sheridan Inn, built in 1893 by the Chicago, Burlington and Quincy Railroad, was once considered the finest hotel between Chicago and San Francisco. Buffalo Bill Cody purchased a stake in it in 1894 and ran it for two years, reportedly auditioning acts for his Wild West Show from the broad front porch while train passengers watched from the platform across the street. The bar inside — heavy oak and mahogany, shipped from England — is still there. The Inn itself is still operating as a hotel. Walk through its lobby and you're standing in the same building where the Absaroka movement held its early meetings, where Bill Cody drank, where the story of this region begins.
A few miles south of town, Eatons' Ranch — America's first dude ranch — has been operating continuously since the Eaton brothers moved here from North Dakota in the 1890s, bringing with them a friendship with Teddy Roosevelt. It still operates today, still draws people, still rides horses into the same Bighorn foothills it always has.
Sheridan is a place everyone who lives here wants to keep a secret. We love it too much to share it loudly. But if you're driving to Yellowstone and you skip it, you've missed the best part of the approach.
Walk Main Street. Have a drink at the Sheridan Inn's Buffalo Bill Bar. Find the Sheridan Iron Works sign. Then point your car west on Highway 14 toward Dayton.
Highway 14 West — Into the Bighorns
Where the valley lifts and everything changesThe moment you start climbing the switchbacks outside of Dayton, something shifts. It feels like the start of an epic journey. Whether you're headed up to ski Antelope Butte, hunt morels in the timber, or hike to Black Mountain Fire Lookout — the climb out of the valley carries a particular excitement that doesn't diminish no matter how many times you make it.
Watch for Black Mountain Fire Lookout on your left as you gain elevation. The tower is visible from the road and the hike up to it is worth knowing about — it climbs roughly 1,000 vertical feet in a mile, which sounds brutal but is manageable with breaks even if you're not in peak condition. A 4WD is suggested for the approach road. The views from the top are the kind that make you understand why someone built a fire tower there.
Moose are everywhere on this road, particularly in the timber stretches. Slow down. They don't move for cars and they're large enough to do serious damage at speed. The road is maintained year-round up to Burgess Junction. Highway 14A — the route that continues west over the pass — closes in late October and reopens around Memorial Day.
"Leaving Sheridan heading west into the Bighorns, I always feel like I'm headed up for an adventure."
Burgess Junction
Where the road splits — and where the North Tongue River runsBurgess Junction is where Bear Lodge sits and where the road divides. This is also where the North Tongue River flows — hallowed fly fishing ground, the kind of water that serious anglers talk about quietly and don't advertise. The moose population here is dense. If you haven't seen one yet, you will.
Bear Lodge is worth stopping at. The pie is genuinely great. It's the kind of place that exists in mountain communities across the West and is disappearing from most of them — get the pie.
Drop off the west face of the Bighorns into a steep red-wall box canyon that feels more like the desert Southwest than anything you were just driving through. Then cross the high prairie toward Greybull and Cody — the route where you might see wild horses ranging free across the grassland.
Head south through switchbacks past Paradise Falls, down to Lovell, and west to Cody. This is the moose route — the stretch past Bear Lodge toward the pass has the highest concentration of moose on the entire drive. Both routes reach Cody. Neither is wrong.
Where the Mountain Becomes Something Else
Dense timber to red desert walls in ten milesThe descent off the west face of the Bighorns through Shell Canyon is one of the most disorienting drives in Wyoming — and that's a compliment. You come through dense conifer forest at elevation, drop into switchbacks, and find yourself suddenly in a steep red-wall box canyon that feels more like the desert Southwest than anything you were just driving through. The color of the rock, the absence of trees, the vertical walls — it makes you wonder if you're even on the same road.
Shell Falls is signed and there's a visitor center. Stop once if you haven't been. The falls themselves are fine. The canyon is the thing.
About eight miles east of Greybull — or four miles west of Shell — watch for the Red Gulch/Alkali National Back Country Byway turnoff. Five miles down an unpaved road is the largest dinosaur tracksite in Wyoming and one of only a few worldwide from the Middle Jurassic Period — 167 million years ago. Real footprints in hardened mud from the shoreline of an ancient sea.
Bring water. Don't go if it has rained recently — the clay road becomes impassable.
Greybull & the High Prairie
Fuel up, find the airplane graveyard, watch for horsesGreybull is a fuel and food stop more than a destination. But two things here are worth knowing about. The Museum of Flight and Aerial Firefighting sits behind the rest area on Highway 20 — WWII-era military surplus planes retrofitted as fire bombers, now retired on the tarmac. It reads exactly like an airplane graveyard and is open seasonally. If you have a genuine interest in aviation history, give it an hour.
Between Greybull and Cody, the high prairie opens up and this is where Wyoming's wild horses range. They're not guaranteed but they're not rare either. Slow down through this stretch and scan the grassland. Seeing a band of wild horses from a Wyoming highway, unpenned and unremarkable about it, is one of those moments that stays with you.
Cody, Wyoming
Buffalo Bill's town — give it more time than you thinkCody could fill a day by itself and still leave things unfinished. Most people treat it as a pass-through. That's a mistake.
The Buffalo Bill Center of the West is genuinely one of the great museums in the American West. Five museums under one roof — natural history, Plains Indian art and culture, firearms, Western art, and the Buffalo Bill Museum. You can do it in half a day if you don't waste time, but a full day could be filled and you'd still miss sections. It refers to itself as the Smithsonian of the West and the comparison isn't entirely wrong.
Downtown Cody is worth a walk. The Irma Hotel — named after Buffalo Bill's daughter, built by Cody himself in 1902 — anchors the main street. Have a drink at the bar. The Cody Nite Rodeo runs every night from June 1st through August 31st at 8pm, which makes Cody the only city in America with a nightly professional rodeo all summer. Go. On Main Street, Olive & Pearl is worth a stop for candles and gifts — the kind of shop that's genuinely good and genuinely local.
One footnote that has nothing to do with Buffalo Bill: Kanye West spent several years in Cody writing the album Ye and held a Sunday Service at the Buffalo Bill Center of the West. It happened. Cody remains largely unbothered by this.
The Buffalo Bill Center of the West fills up in peak summer. The Cody Nite Rodeo sells out on July 4th weekend. Plan accordingly.
Chief Joseph Scenic Highway
Highway 296 · My favorite rideNorth of Cody on Highway 296, the Chief Joseph Scenic Highway is the road that makes people pull over involuntarily. The spring drive is the best — the juxtaposition of deep red canyon walls and the green coming back into the landscape makes for a color combination that doesn't feel real. Every season has something, but spring has that.
This is grizzly bear country. Not theoretically — actually. Keep that in mind at every pullout.
The road climbs to Dead Indian Pass at 8,071 feet — named for the Nez Perce War of 1877, when Chief Joseph led 700 men, women, children and 2,000 horses through Yellowstone trying to reach Canada, pursued by the U.S. Cavalry. The pass is named for one of his tribesmen left behind. The history underneath the pavement is as dramatic as the landscape above it.
Before the final climb to Dead Indian Pass, stop at the Sunlight Gorge Bridge. It's the highest bridge in Wyoming — about 285 feet above Sunlight Creek. Stand on the walkway and look straight down. It's worth the stop.
At the top, as you approach Highway 212, look west toward Cooke City. The two peaks visible on the horizon are Pilot Peak and Index Peak. They're how you know you're almost there.
Chief Joseph joins Highway 212 — the Beartooth Highway — roughly halfway between Cooke City and the top of Beartooth Pass. Turn left (west) for Cooke City, Silvergate, and Yellowstone's northeast entrance. Turn right (east) for Beartooth Pass and Red Lodge, Montana.
Charles Kuralt called it the most beautiful drive in America. He wasn't wrong. Beartooth Pass crests at 10,947 feet on Highway 212 between Red Lodge, Montana and Cooke City — and it is genuinely something else. Steep switchbacks, mountain goats everywhere, views that make passengers grip the door handle. Every spring, road crews plow what they call "the plug" — a massive snowpack that can leave vertical walls of snow ten feet tall on either side of the road. It opens around Memorial Day and closes mid-October, weather dependent.
Beartooth is not on the direct route from Sheridan to Yellowstone — it requires driving I-90 to Billings, south through Laurel to Red Lodge, then climbing west over the pass to Cooke City. It's a full day on its own. But if your schedule allows it, it belongs on the list.
Lamar Valley
The Serengeti of North America · Wolf watching · Slough Creek
The northeast entrance to Yellowstone is the least traveled of all the park's entrances. My personal favorite. The road from Cooke City through Silvergate and into the park drops you directly into Lamar Valley — a wide, river-bottom grassland flanked by ridgelines where wolves, bison, bears, and elk move through in full view of anyone patient enough to watch.
People call it the Serengeti of North America. The comparison holds. The density and visibility of large wildlife here is unlike anywhere else in the lower 48.
My wife and I come for the wolves. We get up before dark. We want to be set up and on the spotting scope as the sun comes up, when the wolves are most active and the light is best. Winter is our preferred season — much smaller crowds and the wolves are easier to locate against the snow. Dusk is excellent too, but we usually have dinner plans in Emigrant.
The diehards who watch wolves in Lamar Valley are as interesting as the wolves they follow. There's a community of regulars — people who know individual wolves by name, know the pack histories, know where they denned three years ago and where they're denning now. The first time a stranger let me look through their spotting scope in Lamar Valley, I was hooked. I couldn't believe what I was seeing.
Watching wolves never gets old. You watch them operate, communicate, and traverse the countryside with ease. Some mornings you wait for hours before anything happens. Other times you watch them exist for hours uninterrupted — hunting, playing, resting, moving. It's like tailgating a football game. The camaraderie among strangers, the long wait, the burst of something remarkable, the collective reaction. There's nothing else quite like it.
Pull over at the Slough Creek rest area. The Junction Butte Pack has denned for pups on the hillside north of this pullout — this is where the majority of serious wolf photographers take their best images. At Slough Creek you have cell service, which is notable in this part of the park.
Wolf watching runs between Mammoth and Cooke City, with the heaviest activity concentrated around Slough Creek. Scan the ridgelines north of the road, particularly in early morning. Some mornings you wait hours. Some mornings they're right there. Either way, you stay.
Gardiner, Montana
The Roosevelt Arch · Follow Yer' Nose · Optics Yellowstone
Gardiner sits at Yellowstone's north entrance — the only entrance open year-round, which is how we access the park in winter. The Roosevelt Arch marks the boundary, inscribed with Teddy Roosevelt's words. Drive through it slowly.
After the historic 2022 flood destroyed the road between Gardiner and Mammoth Hot Springs, crews paved what had been an old historic road as the replacement route. It's now how you transit between the two — a piece of Yellowstone infrastructure with more history per mile than most people realize.
Two stops in Gardiner worth making: Follow Yer' Nose BBQ has a smoke wagon food truck in downtown Gardiner's food truck park. Get the brisket. Optics Yellowstone rents Swarovski spotting scopes — the best glass available for wildlife viewing. Melba, the owner, visits the park every morning and can tell you exactly where the wolves were last seen. Rent a scope from her before you go into Lamar Valley. It changes the experience entirely. Book ahead.
"I rode my motorcycle down Chief Joseph once. It was the best ride of my life."
North of Gardiner — Paradise Valley
My favorite place outside the park
Head north out of Gardiner on Highway 89 and you enter Paradise Valley — the stretch of the Yellowstone River corridor running north toward Livingston, Montana, flanked by the Absaroka Range to the east and the Gallatin Range to the west. This is my favorite place outside of Yellowstone itself. It's where we stay when we visit. The valley has a pace and a quality of light in the evenings that is genuinely hard to describe. It feels like somewhere that knows what it is.
Chico Hot Springs, about 30 miles north of Gardiner in the community of Pray, is a hot springs resort that has been operating since 1900. The pools are spring-fed and open year-round. Stay if you can. Eat there regardless. The Chico dining room is my favorite restaurant anywhere — and I've thought about that claim carefully.
Order the Beef Wellington. It's been on the menu for decades, carved tableside for two, Angus tenderloin wrapped in puff pastry with duck liver pâté and mushrooms. Then order the Flaming Orange for dessert — a signature since 1974, a hollowed orange filled with chocolate, vanilla ice cream, Grand Marnier, vodka and rum, finished tableside with a match. The flames shoot up. Every table in the room looks over. It's a performance and it earns it. Make a reservation well in advance — the dining room fills up.
Yellowstone Hot Springs is another option in the valley — more accessible, different atmosphere, worth knowing about if Chico is full or if you want a more casual soak.
Head north from Gardiner on Highway 89, then turn left where the sign says Tom Miner Basin/Campground. Cross the bridge and turn left. Drive five to ten miles back into the basin until you find a wide spot on the left side of the road where you can pull over and back in. Look right into the pasture.
This is a working cattle ranch where grizzly bears dig for invasive caraway root. The ranchers and the grizzlies have reached a kind of coexistence that is remarkable to witness. In fall, as the bears prepare to den, they're at their most active — digging methodically through the grass in broad daylight while cattle graze nearby. No guide required. No fee. Just a dirt road, a wide spot, and patience.
Absaroka never became a state. The license plates are collector's items. The coins are rarer still. The Sheridan Iron Works sign stands on a building most people drive past without knowing what it means.
But the land that Swickard drew on that map in the Rotary Club basement is still here — the Bighorns, Shell Canyon, the high prairie where wild horses run, Cody, Chief Joseph, Lamar Valley, Paradise Valley. It still feels like its own thing. It still feels like the most beautiful drive in a country full of beautiful drives.
Start in Sheridan. Take your time. The wolves will be there when you arrive.