SP: What is your full name?

VS: Rosella, don’t laugh. Rosella Verlene Schmier. Jenkins Schmier.

SP: And then could I have your year and place of birth.

VS: I was born in Idaho Falls, Idaho. March 29, 1937. I was one of my mother’s first children born in a hospital.

SP: Wow, so were the others home births?

VS: Home births. In 1937, I got born in a hospital. The old Idaho Falls LDS hospital. It used to be by the river, and it’s not there anymore.

SP: The hospital I was born in isn’t there anymore, either.

VS: That’s where my two boys were born, too, in that Idaho Falls hospital.

SP: And did you attend elementary there?

VS: Yeah. I went to East Side and Hawthorne schools because my folks moved from 19th to 18th. So when we moved to 18th I had to go to the Hawthorne school, but when we lived on 19th street it was East Side school, and then O.E. Bell Junior High, and then the Idaho Falls High School.

SP: And then did you do any higher education following that?

VS: No. Jerry and I got married right after, after we got married before we graduated. Got married on the 7th of April.

SP: So you met him in high school?

VS: Oh yes. I met him in junior high.

SP: You met him in junior high?

VS: I was 14 years old and he was in choir. He was 16. We were in choir together and he sat behind me and I had long blonde braids, and he kept pulling them.

SP: (laughter) I can see that.

VS: So our first date was a choir party, all of us. It was a hayride and he asked me to go with him. So we went on a hayride and he brought me home. We dated off and on for three years. It wasn’t anything steady or anything, but for three years we dated off and on. Then, we were stupid children. We figured – Jerry had a social security card. We didn’t know this at the time, that was spelled like a lady. Geraldine Schmier. That’s his name. Jerald Dean Schmier, but it was spelled like a girl’s name, Geraldine Schmier, and so we were afraid he was going to get drafted. We had the draft in 1954, so we got married just a month before we graduated, thinking that would – that he wouldn’t get drafted. Well come to find out his social security card number, name was a girl, and he wouldn’t have got drafted anyway. We found that out two or three years later and just laughed. But no, we’ve been married 71 years. We’ve been in West Yellowstone here for 57 years on the first of April.

SP: What made you guys come to West Yellowstone?

VS: Snowmobiles. My husband got involved with Monte White bombardier because he had a warehouse in Idaho Falls, so he asked Jerry. We had a service station, that was Jerry’s Texaco just on West Broadway, and the warehouse was just like two doors down. There was a bunch of guys that Jerry and I went to school with, but they used to ride motorcycles, and so Monte White asked them if they would participate in a snowmobile race. It was held at Roberts, ID on New Year’s Day. They always have a big festival there in Roberts. So they all went there and rode these snowmobiles around a track and that started it. Then he started, he hired all these guys to race for bombardier so they would travel. This is more Jerry’s line than mine but anyway – anyway, he asked the boys if they would advertise. Snowmobiles were just coming into existence in the United States and he had the distributorship for the whole western United States on Skidoos, and so they did. At that time we had what they called the Western Snowmobile Association snowmobile races. They always started out with one in West Yellowstone and ended the last one in West Yellowstone. December to March. In between they would travel to all these other little villages. They even went to places in Minnesota and Wisconsin. Anyway, they were advertising Skidoos, and so that’s how we ended up in West Yellowstone. When he first came up here to race the snowmobiles, he fell in love with West Yellowstone, and took us a couple of years, but he’s worked in a service station since he was 11 years old and so he looked for a business to buy and the only one that was for sale was the Texaco station where it used to be. So we negotiated with Alex and Walt and then all of a sudden Alex just called him up one day and said it’s not for sale. So then, as fate will have it, we got a phone call about a month later and it was Leroux Clark, real estate guy, where the Slippery Otter is. There was a Standard station and it was for sale. So we scraped what we could together and put a down payment and moved to West Yellowstone. April first 1967

SP: April first (laughter)

VS: And when he came here, the snow was so deep it covered all of the gas pumps and so he had to hire Ken Larsen, which Ken had the garbage place, and hired him to plow it out so we could get opened.

SP: How did you feel about it? You know, he’d been up here for – did you feel good about West Yellowstone?

VS: Well, the kids were still in school so I stayed down in Idaho Falls until school got out, other than I’d come up on weekends, and we ended up buying the Golden West motel because we needed a place to live. So we lived there for, oh, about 4 or 5 years I guess, and then decided we needed a better home and, the boys would change the sheets on the – we had eight rooms, and the boys would change the sheets. They got ten cents for every sheet they changed. So anyway, we had an opportunity then to buy where the Riverside Station is now, that was an old ice house and they did nothing but sell ice, and so we had the chance to buy that and we also bought the property next door. Steve Bloomchrist at the time owned that property, but he was in default with the oil company so they were willing to kick him out, so we bought that one up. There has hardly been a time in our married life that we haven’t owed the bank money except for probably now the last twenty years. Finally got it all paid off. Just as we’d get something paid off, Jerry’d buy something else. Then he got involved in this Madison Addition with the guys and ended up with this lot and we, in the meantime, in 1982, or 72, was it 82? We built our home out at Duck Creek. We always wanted… We had a home on Bellin Road in Idaho Falls and it was out in the country. We had five acres, and my husband wanted to be out in the country so we ended up buying five acres out at Duck Creek, and then when we could we built our home out there. We lived out there for eighteen years.

SP: It’s beautiful out there.

VS: Oh, it is. I can remember standing at my kitchen window and watching an eagle come down and get a fish out of the creek. The little foxes would come up and play on my deck, but the mosquitoes were terrible because we were so close to the creek. Then we started getting buffalo in out there and it just wouldn’t leave us alone. I come home one day and the buffalo was right in front of the garage door. They were curled up on the front step. They had turned on, rubbed up against the outside faucet, and flooded the basement, and we did it backwards. We should have been in town when the kids were in school and then moved out there, but we were out there because he wanted to be in… acreage, he wanted to be in the country. Anyway, the buffalo were just getting to us. He was invested in this Madison Addition so we built this house. It’ll be 23 years the first of August (2025) since we moved in.

SP: It’s a good spot. So the first business you guys got was the Texaco? No.

VS: No, because they decided not to sell it

SP: Right, he decided not to sell it.

VS: but where Slippery Otter is was the Standard oil station.

SP: Okay, so then that was the first place.

VS: And Leroux Clarke owned that. Myron Clarke’s mother, Terry, his dad, had a heart attack and died and so she didn’t want to run it anymore. She tried running it, I guess, for a couple summers and then that wasn’t her cup of tea so she put it on the market. This realtor called us and Jerry came up and he came home and said how would you like to move to West Yellowstone. That was in the fall of 1967.

SP: And had you been, like did you come up to West Yellowstone for the races? Had you been up here before?

VS: We’ve been up here for all the races.

SP: Okay, so you had at least gotten to see where-

VS: We used to stay at The Dude and then we switched over to the Lazy G when Merl Goss owned it, and Richard Goss worked for us. He was a mechanic in the garage, the son, so we were there until I think we obtained the old ice house property and then in 1970 something, I’ve got all this written down somewhere, in 1975 I think, Monty Behr tied. They had Behr’s For Less on that corner and a few motel rooms, and their lawyer came up and asked us if we wanted to buy it. Well, Jerry just laughed at him and said I don’t have that kind of money and he said we’ll make you a deal. So as little down, back to the bank, and we made payments on it for a lot of years, but we ended up owning and renting our motel, and then when we had enough equity in it we built the new units and the new lobby and then we, where it’s at now.

SP: So that was you guys that built it up to –

VS: Yeah. We borrowed $880,000 from the bank of commerce to build that, and that was in 1980.

SP: That sounds like a massive undertaking.

VS: I have this written down somewhere in my books, what year it was. This is my stuff, I’ve got Jerry’s stuff upstairs. He wrote his life history in a notepad, and he’s got it all down. What year he did this, and he was writing his life history. In 1993, Bradley and Diana and Stacey more or less, we turned the business over to them. We were the chairmen of the board, Jerry’s Enterprises, but we just turned that, all the managing part over to the boys and Diana and Stacey. So we took off and went to, Jerry had a sister that lived in Northern Phoenix, in Peoria, and begged us to come down and spend some time with them, so we went down and looked around and ended up buying a house before we come home. So we would go down there for a month and come home and then go back down for a month. We did that for several years and then ended up, when the kids more or less took over everything, we were able to stay the whole winter, except we’d always come home for Christmas, and I always had to be home to get the taxes in by April 15. Anyway, we had that in 93 and kept that place down there until 2016. 9 years ago that we sold it. We sold it in April. The last few years with the kids taking over the business, we stayed down there all winter because Jerry wasn’t healthy enough to be in snowmobile races and, in fact, they didn’t do snowmobile races anymore so there was really no reason for him to be back here other than being the Skidoo dealership, but we enjoyed it down there. We made some really good friends. I still email her and she emails me. They live in Indiana, and we were down there for, 1993 to 2016, around that place, and so we were just in condos so we didn’t have to worry about the yard, but it was a nice brick road and it gave the boys more chance to be the bosses that they needed to be. Anyway, that’s kind of how we got started up here. Like I said, my husband would see an opportunity and he’d buy a lot. We had a lot of virgin lots in town at that time. Where the old antique store is? That was all trees. They wanted to sell it because they were leaving town, so we bought it, and three months later we turned around and sold it to Don Bolton and he put in the antique store. The property behind, it’s across the street from the Economart. They’ve got some apartment houses there now. Walker Cross owned that property and he came to Jerry one day and said he didn’t want it anymore, would he be interested in buying it. No, it wasn’t Walker Cross. I can’t remember who it was, because Walker Cross then wanted it so we sold it to Walker Cross. We’d only had it a month. Jerry was going to do the same thing, put in some apartments, because housing is so horrible. It was still horrible then in the 70s.

SP: That’s what I’ve heard talking to other people is that housing has always been a problem here.

VS: So we were going to put some apartments there for housing, but Walker did it for his help. We knew Bonnie and Walker Cross really well. They were really good customers of ours and we had dinner with them a lot of times, and Walker was quite a character. When computers started coming in in the 80s, he didn’t want any computers in his business. We broke down and there was a fellow that taught computer science at MSU and so we bought a computer. Big thing, and a big, big printer that sounded like a trash machine as all the papers rolled out. Anyway, he wrote programs for us for our business because we had the Brandin’ Iron Motel, and the trailer park, RV park back in the back. It used to be all cabins back there and it was a drug nest. The health department came to Jerry one day and said you need a medal, a star medal, for getting rid of all those places. He said they’ve been a pain in my side for years. Anyway, we tore all that down and put in an RV park. Then a couple years later when we got on our feet a little bit more, we put in the new motel. We kept the old units down there in the bottom part of the property, we kept them just so we’d have something cheaper to rent. You know, our highest priced room that we called the bridal suite. It was a beautiful room, just above the lobby up there, and the bridal suite had a kitchenette, a beautiful king sized bed bedroom, and the living room. We charged $52 a night, and that was our most expensive room. Most of our rooms went for $29-$35 a night, and so that’s how much time has changed in this town. That was in this, early 70s, because we sold it in 1993 to the Povahs, and then the Povahs sold it to Randy Roberson. They only had it for maybe a year and then they sold it. At that time the Povahs had, I’m trying to think of their company. Anyway, they were being ousted out of the park so they wanted to buy more businesses in town, so we sold it to them and Jerry said it’s the worst thing we ever did, we should have kept it.

SP: Which one was your favorite?

VS: My personal? Well, I don’t know. For years and years Jerry and I both worked from 6 in the morning to midnight every single day. I would go to the Brandin’ Iron Motel and check out and do the reports for that, and of course he’d go to the gas station. Then I would go over to the office and start doing my daily reports for the gas station. At that time we had the Exxon, or Riverside, but it was the Exxon then, or was it Amoco? I can’t remember, and we started the Super Save corner, so I would do the bookwork for that. Then when my kids got married, the girls came into the office and started helping, so that helped, but…

SP: But you and Jerry really put in the work and built everything up?

VS: Yeah, we did, but the boys were, and my daughters in law, were good helping hands all these years. They, they did a good job. They started out with Jerry at the old corner station when it was a Standard station when we first came here. That was, Doug was eight years old, Bradley was eleven going on twelve. He was in the sixth grade, Doug was in the third grade when we moved here. For their allowance they had to clean the bathrooms at the station and keep the pumps clean and sweep the driveway.

SP: So when you moved here was the school k-12 or was it still just eighth grade?

VS: It was just to the eighth grade, but it was right in the process of them going to the twelfth grade.

SP: So your kids were –

VS: They both graduated from the old high school.

SP: So they were kind of among the first students to get to graduate from? That’s cool. That’s some fun history.

VS: Yeah, Brad graduated in 1976. Got married in 1978. Doug graduated and then got married in 1979, so those kids have been here for a long time too. They’ve been here – Well, Brad met Diana. We sent him off to college. Jerry says go be a lawyer, be anybody, but don’t be in West Yellowstone, so we sent him to college for two years and that’s where he met Diana. She was from Great Falls, but then they fell in love and wanted to get married and he needed a job, so he came into the business with us. The same thing happened to Doug except he just went to college for one year and then him and Stacey got married, and both come back to help in the business.

SP: And then are all of your kids still here or did some of them go to other places?

VS: Doug lives next door there, Brad lives next door there, and Diana and Stacey. I have six grandchildren and twelve great grandchildren and one grandson that lives here. He works at the Slippery Otter. He used to work for us, but when we sold it, he got mad. He didn’t hit it off with the new owners very well, so he quit and went to the Slippery Otter. He’s been down there for two years at the Slippery Otter. He enjoys it. It’s something different from keeping gas pumps working. Two years ago we sold the business, all the businesses. Jerry just kept growing and just, he’d see an opportunity and didn’t let his, you know. I said when are you going to quit buying and selling and he says when I can’t do it anymore.

SP: Yeah, when we were talking to people about who we should get in touch with for this project of history of West Yellowstone, a lot of people were like well you gotta talk to the Schmiers, they helped build this town.

VS: Well, that’s true. The Grizzly part of it, we owned uh, I’m trying to think. We owned, because we were one of the partners, we got first choice of the lots, and we bought the one next to the bank, First Security, which is a motel now, and then we bought one across the street which is a motel now, and I’m trying to think, there was one other one, I’m trying to remember which one it was, but we sold them all, and I think it’s where Craig, the auto shop is, and we sold all those lots and let the people do what they wanted with them. It was just a way to help West Yellowstone grow. Not that we wanted it to grow that much, because we are surrounded by Yellowstone Park and the forest service, so we can’t go very far, but to bring people in here you’ve got to have a place for them to live and we have a lot now that we’re negotiating. Well, it’s that lot on the corner of Yellowstone. It used to belong to the Eagles and they sold it to us because we owned the property next door, so we own all that property down there. We had a mobile home there, but it’s in the process of being shredded because it’s a 1973 and you can’t get insurance on them anymore. Besides that, it’s not worth living in anyway. Hadn’t been lived in since the first of August. It’s in the process, Chris is going to shred it, get rid of it. He wants to buy that property, and it’s a good chance we’ll sell it to him, but on the corner lot, there’s mountain ops in the garage there. They rent ATVs in the summer and snowmobiles in the winter, so they’ve been renting that place from us for three or four years now, but we’re thinking about maybe putting in a permanent mobile home lot or maybe building some apartments.

SP: Because housing is still a problem here.

VS: Yeah. Because people need a place to live and, so we just sold our business two years ago so we haven’t really sat down and negotiated what we’re going to do with that other property, but we’ve been talking about maybe either a mobile home park, permanent, or putting in some apartments. You know, you can get some nice mobile homes, and we wouldn’t want anything in there that was really old, but I don’t know. We haven’t got that far yet because we need to put in the water and sewer and all that stuff first, but with Jerry’s health the last couple years we just haven’t been able to sit down and negotiate as a family like we should. It’s been talked about a little bit. And then we ended up buying Doug Edgerton’s house over there on Obsidian. He called up Bradley and Doug one day and said I’m moving, would you like to buy my place? Well, that’s the farthest thing from our mind, but they went over and looked at it and could see a bunch of potential of being able to rent it. It’s got storage units on it, and most of it’s just our stuff in there now because when we sold the businesses, we didn’t have a place to put all of it, but now it’s being rented. We just bought it for an investment. God gave us a good deal so the boys thought it would be good for the storage unit and to rent the house out. Doug was moving to, did you know Doug Edgerton?

SP: My mom probably did.

VS: Oh yeah, he a welding shop in town. He made, he groomed all of the ski trails. He hated snowmobiles. He was a skier, so he made a groomer and just took it on the ski trails. He did a good job, and he built that great big shop over there on Obsidian for that, for his groomer and stuff. It was a huge building, but he moved between here and Great Falls. I think he remarried and that’s where she was from. Anyway, he went and did his thing so all is fine, but eventually I know if we don’t do anything with it we’ll sell it, but that will be up to the boys because Jerry and I are kind of out of it right now. He’s going to be 90. We decided to do something for him because he’s been so down in the dumps the last couple years, and then to have his eye taken out… Anyway, so we more or less have turned everything over to the boys, let them decide what they want to do with it. I’m 88, he’s 90, so it’s time.

SP: Keeping up with all the business stuff is exhausting in its own way.

VS: Bradley and Doug and Stacey and Diana, Stacey’s still down there working. She doesn’t put in the hours she used to, but she’s still down there. She’s down there today. Diana goes down maybe a couple days a week, and Brad will go down a couple days a week behind the parts counter. Doug was, but Doug got a job with Tristate so he’s been working for Chris and been hauling gravel over the last month to where all the jobs Chris has. Chris is so busy I cannot believe all the jobs he has. They were digging a basement out by the lake somewhere, somebody’s building a house. Doug said they were out there digging a basement, so Doug is keeping busy and Brad is kind of off and on. He’s 68 years old so he’s more or less retired and enjoying his grandchildren. Bryan’s two children are here, my two great grandchildren, and then Quentin, they’re here in town, so they get them every Saturday and Bryan picks them up about 4:00 on Sunday afternoon and then Bryan has them Sunday and Monday and after school Tuesday, Alex picks them up.

SP: I love that you guys have kind of a family compound back here.

VS: yes, in fact there was a, uh, when we used to have West Yellowstone paper, West Yellowstone News? They took a picture of our houses and called it Schmier Road. It was just one of those things where Jerry was involved with developing this Madison Addition, that he saved three lots, so

SP: I feel like that’s fair.

VS: We liked this cul-de-sac because there wouldn’t be that much traffic, so we picked this lot and Brad and Diana on each side of us. So it’s worked out pretty good, 23 years the first of August since we moved here.

SP: Did you guys ever think about living anywhere else or was it always West Yellowstone?

VS: It’s always West Yellowstone, ever since we moved here in 1968. I used to, because the boys were still in school and I’d go back and forth on weekends for a while. In the summertime we were here. That’s when we got the Golden West Motel, because we had to have a place to live. The fellow that had it, they were getting old and they wanted to move back to Idaho Falls. They gave us a really, the payments on that was cheaper than rent in 68. Then we sold it to Shores. All these people are gone now. We sold it to Shores and then Shores moved and they sold it to somebody else and then they sold it. It’s been sold three times since we had it, but we bought it just for a place to live. We had a friend of ours come up and he put a fireplace in it because it didn’t have any heat, so he built us a fireplace. We had heaters sitting all around the place, and then we hired Kevin Broil and he came and put some heat in for us, but there was no closets, just a shell. A little kitchen and just a shell. Two bedrooms was all. One bedroom was so small you could only put bunkbeds in it and, but it had a laundry room and that’s where they did the laundry for the 8 rooms. $8 a night. That’s what they were going for when we bought it. We raised it to $10.

SP: Which seems like a big increase, but no when you look at the prices…

VS: I know. Jerry and I just can’t get over them getting $300 a night out of it, because the Brandin’ Iron Motel was our most profitable business. Like Jerry said we shouldn’t have ever got rid of it, just hired somebody to manage it and just walked away, but we’re hands on people. I couldn’t keep my nose out of it, so we ended up selling it to the Povahs. Like I said, our rooms were $29-$35 and $52 for the bridal suite and now they’re getting like $350 or something out of that same room. Of course, I’m sure they’ve upgrade it. It’s been, we sold it in 93, so it’s been years since we told it. We put a hot tub in the basement and I don’t know if Brandy’s still got it there or not. We were having problems with the health department. They didn’t really want to okay it because it was located in the basement, so I don’t know if they’ve still got it or not. I could tell you a story about the Brandin’ Iron Motel. We had a movie group that was doing a film on Lewis & Clark and Sacajawea and their trail through Yellowstone Park, so they were looking for some very cheap rooms because they were going to be there for a month. We quoted them a really cheap price for the lower section. They were happy with that and so they were doing their filming and everything, but one day one of the maids came up and she was white as a sheet and she said I’m not cleaning that room. Jerry asked why and she said I want you to come and see it, and the one unit had used the floor as a restroom. Jerry went in and cleaned that all up. Oh the joys of, you know. One time we had one guy, Jerry walked by and a guy was putting his family, you know they were getting ready to go in the Park. Jerry walked by and said that room looked like a hurricane had hit it. There was potato chips crushed into the carpet all over. There was wrappers, pizza boxes, just piled. The bedding was all just piled real high and the place was an absolute mess and Jerry happened to be walking by and he said is that how you live at home? The guy just shrugged his shoulders and got his kids in the car and left. We had all that mess to clean up. And another one, a guy brought in his, we only allowed small pets, but this guy snuck his great big Siberian Husky in one of the rooms and gave him a bath and dried him with the bedspread!

SP: That must have been a mess (laughter)

VS: You know, Mary Alice, I don’t know if you remember her or not, Bob and Mary Alice. They were really good friend of ours, and of course they moved away a lot of years ago and Bob passed away eleven years ago. In fact, twelve years ago. Mary Alice moved back to Billings, that’s where she was born and raised. But we had a lot of good times. He used to own West Service Center here and he repaired dug wells and repaired wells and motors and fridges and appliances and stuff like that, but he just reached an age where there wanted to get out of here so they did, but she said you and I oughta write a book. Behind the Snowbanks in West Yellowstone. Some of the stories and some of the things we have experienced in the 57 years we’ve been here. Been married for 71 years, but it’s a journey and you have to make the best of it, and I don’t think there’s some things I would trade at all. There’s been a lot of good people in West Yellowstone that are passed away now. I think of Mike and Ruth that had the Stagecoach. We used to be good friends with them. Of course Bob and Mary Alice. The Eagles. Walt Stuart and Nora. They’re all gone now.

SP: And things have changed a lot. My mom told me even from late 70s, early 80s. She said when my dad and her moved here it was still a little bit like the wild west.

VS: It was. In fact when we pulled into this town in April of 1968 and I told Jerry. We had a truck and we had a bunch of our stuff. We had bought an old trailer and we were going to live in that trailer at least for the summertime and so we brought some of our belongings up in that old truck. When we pulled into town I said Jerry what kind of a hick town are you moving us to? He said it’ll be fine. It’ll be fine. There was, you know where Ham’s Cafe was, where the Buffalo Bar is now, Ham’s Cafe, and there was a couple of old cabins that looked like they needed to be tore down, and this was all trees. Anyway, we lived in that trailer the first summer and then Jerry decided to keep the business open for the winter so we needed a place to live and that’s when we bought the Golden West motel, and we brought the trailer in and parked it behind on the, trying to think. That was later I guess. We sold that trailer and left it out with, Jerry could probably tell you. That old property where the KOA is and Lionhead resort. He owned it and he was a guy from Norway and he loved to ski. His plan was to build a ski hill on Lionhead, so we parked out there for the summer and one day Doug, like I said he was only eight years old. He found a water snake out there and he brought it in and put it in the trailer. Scared me to DEATH! And he heard me scream and so, I could still see his face. Anyway, he heard me scream and so he came over and took Doug by the hand and said don’t you ever do that again. I mean, it was just a water snake, but I can’t stand the sight of a snake. I mean, I even see pictures of them and blech! And so, you know, we’ve had quite a few experiences here in West Yellowstone but it’s home. You know, when I was going back and forth with the kids in school, as soon as I started up the Ashton hill, I felt like I was going home. It took me a couple of months, but I, you know, it was where we needed to be. I didn’t want to leave because I felt like Jerry drug me here. We had just built a three car white brick home on Bellin Road in Idaho Falls. Everything you’d ever want. It was on five acres. We sold 2.5 acres to our lawyer and he built a big beautiful home next to it, and I didn’t want to leave that, but my mother, she said, you have to give him a chance. He is the breadwinner, that’s his responsibility, and you have to give him a chance. So I said okay Jerry, I’m gonna give you two years, so here we are 57 years later.

SP: It seems like it worked out.

VS: Because it did. We kept that house for eight years and I hired the neighborhood boy to mow the lawn and keep it watered, and we’d go down every once in a while and I’d check on it. Finally we had some really nice people working out with the site. They were looking for a place to rent so we rented to them for a couple of years and then when they moved we sold it. I figured, well, we’re not going back.

SP: I’m glad he got those two years.

VS: Well, my mother just. I didn’t want to leave. My mom was there, my sister, two sisters, my brother, his sister, his mom and dad, all lived. My family was there, and so I just felt like we needed to be there, but he let me keep it for eight years. Mary Alice and I, we’d go Christmas shopping and Donny, their son, the same age as Doug. Doug just turned 65 May first and Donny will be 65 July 7, and so they were the same age and we’d go Christmas shopping to Idaho Falls and stay overnight at our house and we’d fight over the same shirt that she wanted for Donny that I wanted for Doug. We’d be so tired that we’d just lay on the floor and laugh, and then just come home the next day, but it got to the point that we knew we had to, you know, we weren’t going back so we had to sell it. It took me eight years to get rid of it. I mean, it took us eight years to let go of it I should say. But I can’t complain. We had a beautiful home out at Duck Creek. I loved it out there. If the buffalo hadn’t taken over, I think I’d still be there.

SP: It’s really beautiful out there.

VS: In 2002, we moved here (to the Madison Addition). I don’t know, we just, like the girls said. We did this opposite. We should have lived in town while the kids were in school and then been out there. It’s worked out fine. I can’t complain. In fact, I’m glad now because a lot of times when I was going back home, which is eight miles out of here, I’d run into a buffalo herd.

SP: I know, they just do what they want.

VS: Yes they do. Or it was snowing, blizzarding so hard I couldn’t see so it was time to come to town.

SP: And then you guys had, it was Yellowstone Adventures right?

VS: We started Yellowstone Adventures.

SP: Okay, that’s what I was going to ask, was if you started it.

VS: We did. In 1972. Jerry got the Skidoo dealership and, I believe that was in 1970, and then he got the bright idea that he wanted to rent them so we bought twelve snowmobiles and put them out in front of the business and rented them for $35 a day. 24 hours. That’s how stupid we were.

SP: That’s a steal.

VS: Until one night, the cops called us and said Jerry, you’ve got a couple of snowmobiles parked down here in front of the Frontier. I think they’re yours, they’ve got a little sticker on them. That’s when we started Yellowstone Adventures because people could go into the park without a guide. That was in 1972. Then the park started getting, everybody had to put in a permit or dossier, whatever you want to call it. Get permits to go into the park, and we put in, but McCray got them all. Clyde Seely got one but he ended buying, oh the guy that was on the corner. He had one so Clyde Seely bought his permit because he needed more for his business and then I think David McCray let him have one so he could have 30 snowmobiles going in a day. It was just 10 snowmobiles a day plus guide, but yeah. I don’t know how David got it all, but here nor there. We just decided we’ll do the best we can with outside rentals. We actually did better with outside rentals than we did with going in the park.

SP: Yeah, the Bells at Faithful Street Inn had sort of a package deal going with you guys.

VS: Yeah, it was 72 to.. Twenty-three years ago. No, thirty. Thirty-two years ago we started Yellowstone Adventure.

SP: And you just sold that a couple years ago?

VS: Two years ago. First of March 2023. You know, it’s one of those things that, as every business person that’s been in business, sometimes you just get so tired of putting up with nonsense and the daily routine of trying to keep things and keep your employees there that you, you know, you do your level best because you don’t want them to lose their jobs because they have to have a living. This guy just walked in one day and he asked Brad, he says, I’d like to buy your business and Brad looked at him and he said well I just want the Skidoo business. I don’t want the others. I want the Skidoo business. Brad said you have to take the Super Save if you take the Skidoos because it’s all intertwined together. He said he’d think about it and then about a month later he came back and said I’ll take all three of them. He bought the Riverside, Cenex, and Super Save and Yellowstone Adventures.

SP: Wow

VS: As long as he makes his payments, I’m happy.

SP: So how were the fires of 88 for you?

VS: Terrifying. I think I’ve got an album upstairs of the fires of 88. Jerry, at that time we had the station and Jerry had the auto mechanics shop next door. We were a distributor, not just a dealer but a distributor, for Amoco oil and also Exxon, and he had a couple of fuel trucks that he delivered diesel fuel to some of the people that had diesel for their furnaces, and so the park service hired Jerry to carry fuel into the park. They had their destinations. There was one at Madison and then there was one up north, up by Norris, that he had to deliver fuel to, and he said one day coming home the flames were just shooting over his truck. Here he was with this fuel truck and he said I just knew I was going to explode, but he made it home. The fires were pretty scary, um, we had the motel at that time, also the Riverside station, or Exxon station, the minimart we called it. We also had the Super Save, and the forest service came in, the park service. They bought every can of Coleman fuel we had in stock and asked Jerry if we could get more, so we called down to Idaho Falls to our supplier and he delivered a truck load of Coleman fuel up here for the park service. Anyway, it kept us pretty busy, but it was so scary. In fact, I’ve got pictures, I just seen it the other day, of the city park and you can see the motels there that, when the fire started coming up from the west and going around the town, you can see the flames coming up. And then I’ve got pictures of the motel with the flames from the park behind the motel.

SP: I was two, but we were here when the fires happened so I don’t remember them.

VS: It was quite hectic, but the park service kept us pretty busy in the business that we were in, but a lot of people didn’t travel that year so it, you know, the stations kind of, we had just the two stations then. They kind of suffered, but with the park service we just had to keep track of everything. They didn’t pay for nothing until they were ended and then you had to bring in all the invoices and take it up to Mammoth and present it. Then it took another six months to get paid. I still have those papers up there, when we were cleaning out some of the filing cabinets up there, I still had all the papers on the 88 fires. I still might have them here somewhere. Like I said, I just started going through my upstairs. I said I’ve got to get rid of some of this stuff. My kids will just burn it all, so that’s why I drug this out and this out.

SP: What advice would you give to people that want to come here and make it?

VS: I would say don’t try to get rich overnight because that’s not going to happen. We’ve had a lot of snowmobile people that have come up here and just fell in love with West Yellowstone. They come up and buy a motel and two years later they’re outta here. They think they live in a paradise until they live here for a year, and it is a paradise. A lot of people when I say I live in West Yellowstone, they say oh you live in God’s country! And it is God’s country, but it’s God’s country all over the world. You can blossom wherever you’re planted. I just hope that they realize that they can’t, they have to be loyal to their customers, have to be part of the community, which Jerry was mayor for I don’t know how many years, acting mayor. Dutch was the mayor, when Dutch got really sick – had a heart attack, so Jerry was the acting mayor. He was on the city council and our son Bradley has followed steps. You have to be involved in the community. That’s what I would tell. Get involved in the community and know your customers. We had some friends that bought the Thunderbird motel. It’s not there anymore. They used to come up here snowmobiling every year. They just fell in love with this town, so they ended up buying the Thunderbird. Two years later they were gone, went back to Minnesota, and that’s what happens. They think they’re going to get rich overnight and you’re’ not. It’s a working community and we have to be involved. I used to be really involved with the snowmobile club races. Jerry and I were very involved and we always had a snowmobile outing, family outing, Sundays afternoon and take all the kids and go up to Two Top and then we’d come back and go to the Union Pacific building and have chili. That was some of our community things in the 70s and 80s. You just have to get to know one another and be the daughter God wants you to be, and sons I should say, too, and just try to treat people the way you want to be treated. My mother always told me that the golden rule is to do unto others as you would have them do unto you and you’ll be fine. A little kindness goes a long way.

SP: I agree with that completely.

VS: So I wave to people and smile to them. I don’t even know who they are.