Soda Butte Creek YNP

The Soda Butte Creek starts just outside the Northeast Entrance to the Yellowstone National Park near Cooke City, MT. It flows along the Northeast Entrance Highway for most of its entire twenty mile length making it easily accessible.  It starts as a typical freestone mountain stream with a good deal of pocket waters including riffles and runs as it flows through one of the most magnificent picturesque valleys in the park surrounded by towering beautiful mountains. Right next to the highway where the Soda Butte Creek  meets the Lamar River sits a large hot spring cone and that is where A. Bart Henderson, a Cooke City miner, got the strange name of Soda Butte in 1870.

The upper part of Soda Butte Creek flows through a deep canyon known locally as the Icebox Canyon. Fishing in this canyon is good through the summer as the canyon is so deep that it provides shade for the waters and therefore, the water remains cool. However, Because of spring runoff, the creek is generally not fishable until mid-July making the summer an excellent time to fish the Soda Butte. Smaller cutthroats and a few brook trout are eager to take dry flies in the upper part of Soda Butte Creek.

The lower section of the Soda Butte Creek downstream from the Pebble Creek Campground area curves and snakes its way through a meadow in the Lamar Valley before it meets up with the Lamar River.