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.
[End of article]
Todd
I drive a lot in the state and 191 is one of the routs with “life is cheap� issues.
here are some of the others that pop into my head
#2 between Lewistown and GF
the passing lanes are placed wrong and morning/evening summer traffic is blinded into the sun. The tourists that don’t know this make bad passing decisions. Just west of Eddies corner, The belt hill passing lane and a couple of other repeat killer.
#93 between Missoula and Kalispell. I can’t even bring myself to start a list about this piece of road. I don’t want to be mad all day.
#191 you got most of that covered, don’t forget the snowmobile trailer pullers (wide, more on the road in bad weather it seems, and inexperienced drivers with trailers and trailers on ice)
# 12/287 Three Forks to Helena What is wrong with these people.
Montana should be ashamed
all of these (and I’m sure others that I don’t drive on) have been repeat killers for years. (YEARS!)
Our state line sign should read “Welcome to Montana, Big Sky Country, The Last Best Place you might ever see, we have some surprises for you�
I can’t believe I need to list the obvious.
Are you ready for some rocket science?
Reroute dangerous loads around the areas of DEATH
Turn on your lights at times and in areas of DEATH
Added Driving Law enforcement in areas of DEATH
Double the fines in areas of DEATH
(helps pay for the added enforcement!)
Reduce the speed in areas of DEATH
Educate the driving unaware of the areas of DEATH
Todd, thanks and keep on this one. You will make a difference in somebody’s life.
Todd
As usual, an excellent story. In my book, what you outline here raises what may perhaps be the single greatest problem we face in the Greater Yellowstone and the Rocky Mountain West--what I call the libertarian dilemma. The libertarians tell us that the sum total of individual actions in any arena add up to the greatest good for the greatest number of people making those individual decisions. Yet, clearly, people coming to this area to fulfill their individual wants have created situations that none of us would identify as good (unless your definition of the good is the greatest profit to be gleaned from those immigrants). Just the seemingly simple problem of the danger attendant to driving Highway 191 makes this clear. Our lives are in fact worse off because of the impact of ndividual decisions by people to come to the West, decisions taken without any consideration whatsoever of how moving West negatively impacts land, wildlife, or the people already living here (who themselves, including me, made the same mistake).
We cannot conceive of or achieve the good life in the Greater Yellowstone or the West under the libertarian perspective. We have to think and act ecologically. Every act we take has greater impact beyond the sum of individual actions, and those impacts are not good.
It is clear to me that unless we develop public ways to think about, debate, and implement policies regarding the good life in terms of the values and needs of the community as a whole, which also involves wildlife and the land itself, existing above and beyond individuals, conditions will continue to worsen, where the market, not the community, determines who experiences the good life.
Best,
Robert
Two of the twenty-one were my good friends, so I completely concur with the hazards of the Gallatin Canyon winter "luge run." Certainly would help if the NPS would prohibit through truck traffic or give out hefty fines for anything over 45 mph.--Bill Schneider
Comment By McGregor O'Looney, 2-03-06It's always confounded me how a grizzly mauling or shark attack (statistically rare occurrences) yield the most amazing hysteria, while the incredible numbers of highway deaths every day are apparently an acceptable cost for the current way of "life" in our society.
Why can't we have lower speed limits and MUCH greater law enforcement presence on our streets and highways? For those without the time or patience to slow down, exercise caution and courtesy, etc., be assured you would change your attitude if you or someone you love were involved in a serious collision. Think it can't happen to you? Fools.
Robert's comments are right on. This crisis is driven by selfish behavior, pure and simple. It seems to me that at the heart of the libertarian mindset is that each individual is the center of their own universe. But this defies logic. Unless we can improve our abilities to think and act collectively, I'm afraid we're doomed to an ugly society ruled by social Darwinism. In this case, I would suggest we hire substantially more highway patrol officers, to help us to think more collectively.
Oh, and if you don't like traffic? Consider breeding fewer motorists. It's a simple equation.
Thanks Todd, for providing coverage of a seriously undercovered topic.
Unfortunately few people were thinking about the carrying capacity of US 191 when the land use plans for Big Sky, Yellowstone Club and Moonlight Basin were conceived and approved. It was a classic example of not taking a big picture view of these developments and now we are suffering the consequences. Not only do we have an extremely dangerous highway that will be difficult to improve, but we also have created a potential barrier to wildlife movements that together with the massive development at Big Sky and now along Jack Creek in Moonlight Basin, threatens to sever the Spanish Peaks Wilderness from the rest of the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem. Unfortunately environmentalists have been for the most part, asleep at the wheel so to speak, when it comes to addressing the potential impacts of transportation projects. This is starting to change, but transportation issues are still poorly understood by conservationists and mostly viewed in the context of efforts to mitigate the effects of existing roadways, rather than proactively trying to affect future transporation project design. The Highway 191/Big Sky build-out should serve as a wake up call to everyone who cares about the people and wildlife of this region. Its another example of the less than benign impacts of life in the New West.
Comment By Bill Schneider, 2-11-06As a footnote, people might be interested in a bit of history. Back in the early seventies, I was one of the people who opposed the land exchange proposed by Chet Huntley that, in essence, created Big Sky. At the time, Mr. Huntley said emphatically that he was only interested in a ski hill. He was NOT interested in developing real estate in the area. I guess we all know what happened.
Bill
I started skiing Big Sky when I was 9 years old. On the weekends my family would drive from Dillon to face 191. Before I had my license, I could have driven the canyon stretch in my sleep. It's amazing how much the traffic on that road has increased over the last 13 years. Over the last 4 years I have been a daily commuter on 191, living in Bozeman and teaching skiing in Big Sky. Every day I count my blessings that I have not been killed during the drive and feel lucky to have only been involved in one accident where the car I was in was totaled. The state has increased law enforcement on the road and added a rumble strip down the center of the road but the area is still treacherous. Personally, I'm not going to push my luck. I'll continue to ski Big Sky but am leaving the morning train up the mountain behind. There is too much traffic, too many trucks, and too much ice. I simply have too much to live for to keep tempting fate on the 30 miles that lie between Big Sky and the Gallatin valley.
Comment By Howard Wilkinson, 9-07-10I nearly always avoid this stretch of highway. It is unfair to point the finger at trucks in this case. I have seen far more dangerous and reckless driving by people in automobiles on that stretch of highway than by trucks. Impatience is the killer many times. Passing in blind stretches... and unlike many highways there is no escape in many places. To the highways of death mentioned in an earlier post, I would add highway 310/212 south of Laurel...where all the drivers seem to be insane. Avoid all these highways at night..particularly at dusk. The tailgaters don't give a damn if you hit deer, and the oncoming headlights give you no reaction time. I still savor the evil glee I felt one night when I took down a deer (with an Aerostar), doing no damage except to the plastic air dam beneath the bumper.... as a result of being blinded by a tailgater, and watched him total his car on the carcass right behind me!! There is no reason on Montana's sparsely traveled roads to ride someone's tail. A few seconds gained perhaps....... at what risk.... at what cost?? Most accidents in Montana are the direct result of stupidity, and the vast majority are single car accidents, mostly roll overs, and the scenario is always the same. Driver gets off the road, tries to recover.... the gravel doesn't give immediate response, so he steers more, when it catches, he's nearly sideways...... He may make another oscillation, or he may flip right then, but it's always the same story.
Howard