[Rushing Water Slowly Increases] [Calm Water Flowing] (Mike) - No, I mean we had no idea that there, that, a 500 year flood was coming down the river.

[mug hits table] - My name is Billie Taylor and I own Yellowstone Roughriders based out of Gardiner, Montana.

[Rushing River Gradually Increases] Growing up, all of us kids had different things.

You know, everybody took to something.

Vos took to sports, Wes took to computers.

Jesse took to music and I really took to horses.

I loved it.

I did not know that horses were going to remain in my life.

You're a young girl, you love horses, you're a pony girl.

I never outgrew it.

When I was young, we came out on a family vacation to Yellowstone and I could not take my eyes off of the scenery.

Everything coming from Ohio.

I was like, this is a huge, huge world.

In 2006, my mom and I packed up my Toyota Camry.

The day after graduation, we jumped in it, drove out to Yellowstone.

I had taken my first job as a wrangler.

This was more than just a summer gig, more than just the pony girl stage.

In 2015, Jerry hired me as the head wrangler of Roosevelt Corrals in the park.

I went on to run the corrals for five years after that.

So I can remember in 2018, someone said, had called me and said, there's a permit for sale.

Yellowstone Roughriders is up for, you know, for grabs.

In January.

I sent my application in thinking all here we're good.

I did not get approval until June 6th.

I remember I was in the bathtub.

I got the email, I screamed, did a happy dance, and then away we went.

We started rides the next day and the way I look at it is that first year of business was just one bag of bricks hitting me in the face, learning to pick it up and put it over my shoulder, continue walking, wait for the next one, be ready for it.

[Dramatic Music Fades In] That was, that was my first year in business going into 2022.

The pandemic's behind us, the government shutdowns behind us.

I'm ready.

It's my year.

- We'd gotten a lot of late snow.

I think the numbers I saw was on April 1st, 2022.

The snowpack was at about 75% of normal.

On May 1st it was at 107% of normal.

Then June 11th and 12th, we got a lot of rain, anywhere between 10 and 12 inches in the park on top of that snow.

And it all came down at one time.

I had no idea.

I don't think anybody did.

- I had a private ride with four people.

My brother Ernie and I were taking that ride together and Ernie and I got back to the trailer and the weather was really bad and I thought, dang it, tomorrow I have a full day ride and I might have to cancel it because of the weather.

I hate canceling because of the weather.

- Got back home about 11 o'clock, I get a text from the park that Dunraven Pass is closed.

A little bit later I get a mess-, get a text from the park that the north entrance road is closed.

Ahh okay, it could be weather, it could be somebody struck a bison or an elk in a car.

It was for hazardous conditions is all it said.

So I turned the phone off, went to bed, got up the next morning about 6:00 AM Wandered into the kitchen, looked out the kitchen window, and the river was raging below our house.

This is not good.

[Dramatic Music Continues to Play] (Mike) - There was a flood in 1997, one back in 1918 and those flow levels in the Yellowstone River were measured at just at or just above 30,000 cubic feet per second.

The flood of June 13th, 2022 was measured at 51,400 cubic feet per second.

Almost double [Rushing Water, Dramatic Music Increases] - My barn is in Corwin Springs, Montana.

The only way to access that is through Yankee Jim Canyon, - And anybody that's familiar with it knows that it's fairly deep canyon.

A lot of water flows through there.

But there was three feet of water on the road.

(Billie) - I had to make the decision, do I leave my horses in Corwin Springs where is this canyon is compromised, we won't be able to get to or do I try and make a move to get 'em out, which is also dangerous.

So we actually, we got about seven or eight riders.

We turned my horses loose from the barn and we ran them on that old road up the canyon to get to the other side.

[Dramatic Music Slows] - As the water receded, became clear what the physical damage was and it became pretty apparent what the economic damage was gonna be going forward.

For the entire year of 2022, the, the tax receipts for the town of Gardiner were off anywhere between 75 to 90 percent.

So that means the business was off 75 to 90 percent for the whole town.

If your business was tied to the park and the visitation, which pretty much everything in Gardiner is there was nothing.

[Melancholy Music Plays] The North Road originally closed because the flood washed it out in five different spots between the entrance gate in Gardiner up the hill to Mammoth.

(Billie) - I’m sitting in Gardiner, I have all my horses, all my saddles, and I'm sitting there.

But I have nowhere to take those people.

I can't get into the park.

I wanna say that day I told my brother Ernie, my brother Jesse and Risa, my employee, I told them, I said, we're not gonna have a summer for you guys.

You better start looking for work.

The difficult part for me was the fact that all over the media, sometime in July, Yellowstone Parks open we're open.

I sat in a meeting down in Gardiner where I had someone tell me, Billie, you can get back into the park.

- It was an old a hundred year old stage coach road that had never been maintained.

This thing may have been 10 feet wide at best.

Unfortunately, folks like Yellowstone Roughriders and other outfitters that were pulling trailers into the park, there's no way they could get in.

- So the summer of 2022, which was the flood, the only time I ever accessed the park was to drive all the way around for my pack trips.

I was never able to access it for day use.

I ran through ideas in my head over and over and over again.

I had some national forest service days that were available to me.

I then got moved from being able to take 700 people to, you now can take 70 and you still have to make it work.

[Melancholy Music Continues] I am okay right now because guess what, I paid for it last year, but what the heck's gonna happen come November when I have to pay my pasture bill or, you know, buying hay for the, the following season, buying new horses because I, I have to upgrade every year.

That was the scary part for me.

And I can remember the last bill that I had to pay, I had to buy hay from the barn and my uncle called me and he said, Billie, have you, have you checked your P.O.

box lately?

And I was like, no.

So I went and checked the P.O.

box and I opened my mail and I had a check big enough to cover the hay [Music Gets More Upbeat] with a note from my uncle saying Thank you for everything you do for our family, you know, for, for the people around you.

We just wanna help a little bit.

We've been there.

[Motivational Music Plays] If anyone tells you they've gotten to where they're going without any help, they're lying to you.

And I had help.

I had immense, overwhelming help and thank goodness, 'cause I'm still here because of it.

- There was a lot of people that stepped up here.

I was probably more impressed by that than just about anything during the whole aftermath of this flood.

You can't put a price on that, you know And it got to the point that we were telling some folks, right now we're good.

We'll call you if we need you.

- But just, it's kind of been a motto in our town, like we're Gardiner strong, we stick together and we've been through it.

[Slow Rushing Water] [Happy Music Fades In] When I started a business, I thought it was gonna be easy and from the get go you learn that that's not the case.

And I feel like everything that I've experienced up until this point only makes me more certain about the future because I'm not gonna go through that just to throw in the towel.

And I think give me a few years with, without that, oh my gosh, watch what we can do.

[Happy Music Increases] People always ask me, what, what's your favorite part about the job?

And what I really love doing is sharing Yellowstone with people while on a horse.

And to get to know them and to show them what we get to do every day.

What we get to see is, is such an honor and also such an honor that people really, really enjoy.

[Happy Music Continues Playing] [Happy Music Fades] [Dramatic Music Fade In]