Mammoth Hot Springs, WY

Mammoth Hot Springs: Elk and Buffalo With Your Cheerios

Marsha Karle and her husband live in a historic stone house amid towering mountains and bubbling hot springs in the small village of Mammoth Hot Springs, Wyo., (pop. 300) five miles inside Yellowstone National Park’s northern boundary. It’s a fairly conventional rural life—except for the elk.

Most of Mammoth’s year-round residents are park employees who agree wildlife is one of the greatest perks of life in the town that 3 million visitors pass through each summer. Imagine awaking each day to bison roaming nearby or listening to the lonesome howl of coyotes and wolves.

Just as relatively temperate weather drew Park Superintendent P.W. Norris to build the first permanent buildings at Mammoth in 1878, it also makes Mammoth a natural spot for the elk to spend much of their time.

The ranch-style homes of Lower Mammoth village were constructed between 1956 and 1966, as part of the program to house park employees and their families. The new residents sowed lawns and planted trees. The elk wander into yards to graze on the tender green grass and use the trees to scratch their antlers, which itch when growing. The aggressive scratching of the large bulls usually removes all of the bark from the trees.

“In order to get anything to grow here, whether it’s shrubs or trees, it has to be fenced,’’ says Lori Gruber, a landscape architect who has lived and worked in Mammoth Hot Springs for 13 years. So residents erected wire fences around the trees and shrubs and partitioned off small sections of grass for children.

Some considered taking the grass out, but that would leave children with no place to play. “So we have chosen to leave the grass in and deal with the elk that are here,” Karle says.

That means paying close attention to the 800-pound Wapiti (the American Indian term for elk) that sometimes get pushy. “The elk will run after you,” says Karle, who has lived in Yellowstone Park for 14 years. “They won’t attack you; they’re usually just defending their territory.”

Lee Whittlesey, a Yellowstone Park archivist, says his 7-year-old daughter, Tess, and other children learn early to stay away from the animals. When an errant soccer ball falls at the foot of an elk, the children don’t chase it.

“They stop and hope the elk will walk away,” he says.

The male elk, known as bulls, are a little more assertive in the fall when they’re protecting their herds. And in the spring, the females, or cows, will try to keep people away from their offspring.

And every once in a while there’s an elk with an attitude, for no apparent reason.

“Last year we had an elk—a bull—charging vehicles,” Karle says. “He would punch holes in the side of them with his antlers.”

That bull’s park privileges were suspended—at least as far as hanging out in Mammoth. He was removed to more remote parts. Still, that’s the exception rather than the rule, and it’s quite rare for an elk to injure any of Yellowstone’s year-round human residents.

“I tell my children that not everyone has a herd of elk or a bison charging through their yard as they enjoy their Cheerios in the morning,’’ Gruber says.

Most of Mammoth’s residents are thrilled to see the majestic creatures and consider them a big part of what makes living in Yellowstone National Park so special.

“We picnic at a little lake that’s within a five-minute drive from my house,” Whittlesey says. “Visitors don’t know where it is and nobody goes there but the residents. We watch the fish jump and the dragonflies, then across the lake we’ll see a black bear. It’s really idyllic.”

Writer Eve Byron lives on French Bar Mountain outside of Helena, Mont.

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