Yellowstone Reopens a Key Gateway After Devastating June Flooding
It’s been a year since a record-breaking and record-breakingly massive June deluge flooded Yellowstone National Park in the United States. The flooding was catastrophic and resulted in the deaths of dozens of animals, the most famous of which was Coho Salmon, an endangered fish that the United States government helped create, named after its original owner, a local Native American fishing rights activist.
Now, a year after the disaster is over, Yellowstone has been rebuilt and is once again open to the public.
After almost a year of trying to get funding for repairs and reopening to the public, the park is finally open a year later.
“We’ve made a lot of progress so far, but we’re still a long way from being completely reopened,” Yellowstone President Dan Wenk said in a video posted on the website of the American Museum of Natural History in Manhattan.
The park’s visitor facility at Mammoth Hot Springs re-opened last month with a few new activities, such as a new climbing wall, but many of the park’s other visitor experiences, such as swimming and fishing, were not as well equipped.
The main trailhead at Mammoth Hot Springs re-opened to the public last month, and the park is in the process of re-opening all of its other facilities.
“We’re just starting to reopen as of June 1 with the main area at Mammoth Hot Springs, the fishing and swimming areas, and a couple of more spots throughout the park,” said park spokesman Dan Wyllie in an interview with National Geographic.
“We have hundreds of thousands of visitors just trying to get to Mammoth—some are on foot and some are in their car. So to open the main area at first was our main goal. If we could open