Clarks Fork Overlook

Clarks Fork Overlook is a roadside pull-off on US 212 above the Clarks Fork of the Yellowstone River. The south-facing view runs from wooded slopes to the broad valley and the river canyon. I'd keep this short stop if you like a view with a story behind it; you can read the landscape from the trees out to the distant ridges.

The foreground trees grow over old Precambrian granite; beyond them, the river's alluvial valley opens up. The Clarks Fork cuts a canyon between the granitic Beartooth terrain and the volcanic Absarokas. Farther south, displaced blocks of the Heart Mountain area sit above the Heart Mountain Detachment, an event dated to about 48.9 million years ago. There's a lot packed into one broad view. For photos, keep some forested slope in the foreground so the valley reads as a deep landscape instead of a flat strip of mountains.

The Clarks Fork takes its name from William Clark of the Lewis and Clark Expedition. Indigenous people west of the Continental Divide used this river corridor to travel to Great Plains buffalo hunting grounds. Gold found along the upper river in 1869 brought miners to a camp that became Cooke City. Those stories belong to the wider river corridor, but the valley is what you're looking down on here.