Cooke City, Montana
Cooke City is an unincorporated community and census-designated place (CDP) in Park County, Montana, United States. As of the 2010 census, it had a population of 75. 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 in elevation through the Beartooth Mountains and across the Beartooth Plateau. The town's chief industry is tourism, which during the winter includes skiing and snowmobiling. It is named for Jay  Cooke, financier of the Northern Pacific Railroad. Geography. 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. The valley is part of the Yellowstone River watershed. U.S. Route 212, the Beartooth Highway, passes through the center of Cooke City, leading southwest into Yellowstone National Park , and east over Colter Pass in the eastern part of the CDP to continue southeast back into Wyoming in the valley of the Clarks Fork Yellowstone River and thence into the Beartooth Mountains.