The Spectacular Deathtrap

U.S. Highway 191: A Lethal Poster Child For Growth In The West

By Todd Wilkinson, 2-02-06

For Montanans who live in the southwestern part of the state, the carnage has become such a normal occurrence that it's almost regarded as an accepted afterthought of our travel.

When visitors tell us they are driving north to Bozeman during the winter or consider a day trip by car to West Yellowstone and Yellowstone National Park, the common retort we offer them is: "Go via Ennis. Stay out of the Canyon. It's longer but you'll avoid the ice and trucks."

To you readers unfamiliar with the codespeak mentioned above, it means this: U.S. Highway 191, the north to south, double-lane route running between the suburbs of Bozeman by way of the ski resort community of Big Sky to the national park gateway town of West Yellowstone is often a perilous, ice-covered deathtrap in winter. Winding along the banks of the famous Gallatin River, hidden in the shadows of two mountain ranges, coated with humidity that wafts off the river and then ices over, favored by semi-trailer-truck drivers who always seem harried for time, it is heart-palpitating.

But beside its nasty reputation, Highway 191 during the non-snowy months is something else. It is a spectacular scenic route, an avenue to great fishing, hiking, hunting, resort living, and wild country, that once served as a grand visual entryway for Easterners coming to Yellowstone. However, Highway 191 is also our symbol of misery.

In Thursday's Bozeman Daily Chronicle, reporter Walt Williams opens his story about 191 this way: "Twenty-one people have died on U.S. Highway 191 between here [Big Sky] and Four Corners since 1996, while at least another 374 people have been injured in crashes."

The rate of injuries makes 191 one of the most dangerous stretches in Big Sky Country. This fact alone has created a set of growth-related paradoxes that federal and state highway engineers are having a difficult time resolving. Everyone loves to drive 191 and yet hardly anybody looks forward to driving it during inclement weather. Everyone proclaims the inspiring beauty of the path it takes and yet most agree that any major construction fixes to make it safer will tarnish 191's world-class scenic characteristics.

Folks who have flocked to live in Big Sky in hoards did so to reside in a quieter place that was set apart from Bozeman and yet the growth-related bustle that is today engulfing Big Sky has put a dreaded edge into the road leading to and from Shangri-la.

Down the Gallatin Canyon, the valley that cradles Big Sky and tony gated destinations like The Yellowstone Club was little more than pastureland for cattle as late as the 1960s. But as residents have sought the good life in its dale, and in turn as it has attracted a flood of vacation home owners, Highway 191 has been transformed from being quaint and bucolic to become a swell with daily commuters.

Highway 191 may perhaps be southwest Montana's most prominent and viscerally-repulsive poster child for the negative impacts that growth brings for practically everyone who lives in the Gallatin Valley knows of someone who has been injured in a wreck there.

The weather is a factor; so, too, is the winding, two-lane nature of the road. Speed and poor driving also play a part. But the bane for this writer, who had endured dangerous tailgating countless times while driving with my family, is truckers.

Ask anyone who lives in Bozeman, Big Sky or West Yellowstone and you will hear them curse the truckers who often exceed the speed limit, rarely slow down out of caution, ride the bumpers of motorists in front of them, and treat 191 as a shortcut between Idaho Falls and Interstate 90.

Williams' story in the Bozeman Chronicle provides a good overview of the problems that highway officials are facing. For many, however, concern over Highway 191 is like a nightmarish lampoon of the Bill Murray film "Groundhog Day" in which each winter more people die yet we wake up confronting the same reality over and over again without any meaningful resolution. Attached here in addition to Willliams' piece is another storythat quotes state legislator Roger Koopman.

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