Cooke City, MT

Cooke City is an unincorporated community and census-designated place in Park County, Montana, United States. The 2020 census counted 77 residents. Prior to 2010, it was part of the Cooke City-Silver Gate CDP. The community sits northeast of Yellowstone National Park on the Beartooth Highway, which leads east to Red Lodge, Montana, on a scenic route climbing to 10,947 feet in elevation through the Beartooth Mountains and across the Beartooth Plateau. The through line in Cooke City is the way its history and present-day settings remain visible on the same map. Cooke City makes the most sense through those concrete details, with its history still visible in the settings people use today.

The town's chief industry is tourism, which during the winter includes skiing and snowmobiling. Cooke City is near the southeast corner of Park County, bordered to the south by the North Absaroka Wilderness within Shoshone National Forest in the state of Wyoming, and to the west by the community of Silver Gate, Montana. The two towns sit in the valley of Soda Butte Creek, which flows southwest into Wyoming to join the Lamar River in Yellowstone National Park.