Bison 2

Our pack explored Cooke City on Saturday, May 27th at approximately 1pm. Cooke City is a small town in the mountains that is made up of one major road. The section of town that our pack explored was along the main road.

Physical Setting:

The town is completely centralized around the main road that runs through the town. Hotels, cabins, souvenir stores, and restaurants can be seen on either side of the road. The huge number of lodging choices along with restaurants helped to show our pack the influence that tourists and visitors have on the town. The souvenir stores also had very large storefronts in comparison to some of the other businesses in town, which emphasized the impact of tourists on town.

While walking through town, our group came upon the Cooke City General Store. This store is labeled very proudly as a registered historic building in town and is clearly very well loved. Despite the fact that the town obviously draws in a lot of tourists, the history of the town is proudly shown through the Cooke City General Store.

Interactions

While in town, we didn’t encounter many locals sadly. While in the Cooke City General Store, we stroke up a quick conversation with the man working behind the counter. We noticed that he had a thick accent so we decided to ask him where he was from. He simply said that he was from Minnesota and that he came to Cooke City because of the snowmobiling and was offered a job doing roadwork so he decided to stay. When we asked him if a lot of people came to Cooke City from other places, he said yes and that only 3 or 4 people stayed in Cooke City for life. After our encounter with the man in the general store, we didn’t encounter any other locals in the town other than those working in the souvenir shops trying to sell things to us.