Beartooth Plateau, Montana–Wyoming Line, 1950s

Archive & AtlasEstablished · MMXXIII

Beartooth Plateau, Montana–Wyoming Line, 1950s — Archive & Atlas

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Beartooth Plateau, Montana–Wyoming Line, 1950s — Archive & Atlas

Unattributed 1950–1959

AA-2026-B1D120

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Someone pulled the car onto the shoulder of the new highway, cut the engine, and stood in air thin enough to make the ears pop, certain that a snapshot could hold what the elevation felt like. The Beartooth Highway had only been open a couple of decades by the time this slide was taken, and in the 1950s driving it was itself the point of the vacation, a scenic accomplishment you could tell people about at Christmas.

The glacial cirques and the snow lingering into July were not unusual for the range, but they were unusual for the tourist, who came from somewhere at a normal altitude and treated permanent snow in summer as a small miracle rather than the ordinary business of a plateau above ten thousand feet. The clouds stacked up over the peaks the way they do above any high divide, indifferent to the fact that someone below had just spent good film on them.

No trail, no car, no fellow traveler intrudes on the frame, which was probably deliberate. A 1950s motorist wanted proof of having been somewhere spectacular and alone in it, even though the pullout was, at that moment, almost certainly full of other people doing the same thing.

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