This high stretch between the Divide crossings was once rated the worst main road in Yellowstone. It passes the Shoshone Point pullout, built for a view of Shoshone Lake with the Tetons behind it, and the scene of the 1914 stagecoach robbery in Ranger Boone Merrick's tale. The trees may have other ideas about the view today.
That pullout at Shoshone Point, where the bandit worked, was no accident. Road engineers built it to frame Shoshone Lake against the Teton Mountains. You're driving what the records of nineteen thirty-four call the lowest type and poorest main road in the park. It started badly. When Hiram Chittenden took over, he found the crew at the Old Faithful end just following an old trail. As the road study tells it, that was Mister Lamartine's idea of locating a road, to follow a trail with all its irregularities. Chittenden ended up locating it himself, working between the two ends. A few miles on, you cross the Divide again. Thick lodgepole holds this high country. The Mountain Shoshone worked country like this on foot. Unlike most other western tribes they didn't adopt the horse, and some scholars think riding would have hindered the way they hunted. Their dogs looked like wolves and huskies, and they pulled the loads.
Photo: NPS Photo / Neal Herbert · Public domain