{"id":7183,"date":"2015-06-27T10:03:40","date_gmt":"2015-06-27T16:03:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lastbestnews.com\/site\/?p=7183"},"modified":"2015-06-27T10:03:40","modified_gmt":"2015-06-27T16:03:40","slug":"gardiner-aims-to-lure-obama-to-yellowstone-in-2016","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/2015\/06\/gardiner-aims-to-lure-obama-to-yellowstone-in-2016\/","title":{"rendered":"Gardiner aims to lure Obama to Yellowstone in 2016"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Obamas\"<\/a>

White House photo by Pete Souza<\/p>

President Barack Obama awaits the eruption of Old Faithful with First Lady Michelle Obama and daughters Sasha and Malia during a 2009 visit to Yellowstone National Park.<\/p><\/div>\n

President Barack Obama has had a busy week, making headlines and sparking discussions on a wide range of issues in what may well turn out to be the most defining few days of his presidency.<\/p>\n

He delivered a heartfelt eulogy for the Rev. Clementa Pinckney, the pastor and state senator gunned down along with eight others in a Charleston, S.C., church. He chatted by phone on live TV with Jim Obergefell, a prevailing plaintiff in the Supreme Court decision on marriage equality. He even found a way to cooperate with congressional Republicans on an international trade deal.<\/p>\n

The week\u2019s events showed that even a lame duck president with a 45 percent approval rating who has long since lost solid majorities in Congress can still command the nation\u2019s attention.<\/p>\n

It also explains why many in the Yellowstone National Park gateway town of Gardiner\u00a0are working hard to attract Obama as a featured guest for next summer\u2019s celebration of the National Park Service centennial.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve been aiming high for a couple of years,\u201d said Bill Berg, a key planner with the Gardiner Gateway Project<\/a>, an ambitious, multi-agency partnership that aims to reconfigure Yellowstone\u2019s North Gate and make numerous improvements in Gardiner aimed at better serving park visitors.<\/p>\n

A presidential visit would help focus attention on Yellowstone and the rest of America\u2019s national parks, and would highlight the significance of the work being done in the unincorporated town of Gardiner, he said.<\/p>\n

Berg has been among those leading the effort to lure Obama to Gardiner for a ceremony planned for Aug. 25, 2016, the 100th anniversary<\/a> of the creation of the Park Service.<\/p>\n

\u201cGardiner is still the only event on the National Park Service calendar for the 25th of August\u201d next year, Berg said.<\/p>\n

\"CapreAir_Variable\"<\/a><\/div><\/div>\u201cBeyond our ambitions to get the president here, we want that day to be much more than a ribbon-cutting for the Gateway Project, and for it to even go beyond the Centennial,\u201d Berg said. \u201cIt\u2019s something to kick off the second century of the National Park Service, and celebrate how Yellowstone is the inspiration for this entire system built for the \u2018benefit and enjoyment of the people.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Berg said that Yellowstone Superintendent Dan Wenk has spent time in Washington, D.C., meeting with Park Service Director Jonathan Jarvis to discuss plans for next year\u2019s centennial celebration in Gardiner.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut regardless of whether the president makes it, we\u2019ll have a big event here in Gardiner on that day,\u201d Berg said.<\/p>\n

Yellowstone historian Lee Whittlesey said he is not optimistic that Obama will make the trip.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt will be near the end of Obama\u2019s term in an election year,\u201d Whittlesey said. \u201cSo my guess is he\u2019s going to be far too busy to do that.\u201d<\/p>\n

President Theodore Roosevelt visited Gardiner<\/a> in 1903 to help lay the cornerstone in the gateway arch that bears his name. That trip was primarily a personal vacation to the park, which is the more common reason for a presidential trip to Yellowstone than one for official functions, Whittlesey said.<\/p>\n

Obama may also be less likely to visit next year, Whittlesey said, because the president and his family have already been to Yellowstone. They toured the park <\/a>during a 2009 summer vacation, complete with a viewing of Old Faithful\u2019s eruption and a stop for ice cream at the Hamilton Store.<\/p>\n

But just as so many people are happy to have any excuse to return to Yellowstone\u2014Bill Clinton visited the park twice while president\u2014Obama could end up returning next year.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou never know,\u201d Whittlesey said. \u201cIt could go either way.\u201d<\/p>\n

Contact Ruffin Prevost at 307-213-9818 or ruffin@yellowstonegate.com. Reprinted with permission from YellowstoneGate.com<\/a>, an\u00a0independent, online news service about Yellowstone and Grand Teton national parks and their gateway communities<\/i>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

President Barack Obama has had a busy week, making headlines and sparking discussions on a wide range of issues in what may well turn out to be the most defining few days of his presidency.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":21,"featured_media":7184,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[2714,286,953,119],"class_list":["post-7183","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-diversions","tag-gardiner-gateway-project","tag-national-park-service","tag-president-obama","tag-yellowstone-national-park","prominence-top-story"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7183","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/21"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7183"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7183\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7184"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7183"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7183"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7183"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}