In Park County - which includes Livingston, Gardiner and Cooke City - a preliminary assessment of 437 structures found three residences were destroyed, 76 had moderate to major damage and another 126 had minor damage. In Red Lodge, nearly 150 homes were damaged or destroyed after Rock Creek escaped its banks last week. The townвЂ™s mayor says about a third of the flooded homes are too far gone to be repaired. In and around the agricultural community of Fromberg, the Clarks Fork River flooded almost 100 homes and badly damaged a major irrigation ditch that serves many farms. Some of those hardest hit in the disaster - far from the famous parkвЂ™s limelight - are leaning heavily on one another to pull their lives out of the mud. Montana counties have also been surveying their damages. вЂњTheyвЂ™ll have to look at all the resources the park is designed to protect, and try to do this project as carefully as possible, but theyвЂ™re also going to try to go fairly quickly,вЂќ said Brett Hartl, government affairs director at the Center for Biological Diversity. The scope of the damage is still being tallied by Yellowstone officials, but based on other national park disasters, it could take years and carry a steep price tag to rebuild in an environmentally sensitive landscape - with a huge underground plumbing system - where construction season only runs from the spring thaw until the first snowfall. вЂњItвЂ™s going to be a summer of adjustments.вЂќ вЂњWeвЂ™ve gotten a lot more done than we thought we would a week ago,вЂќ Sholly said. The temporary route also could be used by commercial tour companies that have permits to lead guided visits. That would let employees who work at the park headquarters in Mammoth get to their homes in Gardiner, Sholly said. With no chances for an immediate fix, Sholly said 20,000 tons of material were being hauled in to construct a temporary, alternate route along an old road that runs above the canyon. Trunks of huge trees litter the the surrounding canyon. Muddy water now courses through where the roadbed had been only a week ago.

Yellowstone park open roads