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Red Lodge, Mont. – Last winter was particularly harsh in this gateway town to Yellowstone National Park.

High atop the nearby Beartooth Mountains, the snow piled up, foot upon foot, eventually covering home-sized boulders and creeping ever higher on the trunks of the pine trees that grow on rugged slopes.

In May the rain came. Small storms at first and then a pounding, driving soaker that lasted for two days and nights. Temperatures climbed. And all of that water from the rain and the melting snow began seeping into the ground.

On the morning of May 19, the soil could take no more. With a groan and then a chilling roar, the Beartooth Mountains gave in to the relentless surge of water.

For two days, monstrous slides sent towering waves of dirt and mud and granite toward the valley floor – laying waste to everything in their paths.

When the mountains stopped buckling, 13 catastrophic slides had destroyed most of a 12-mile section of the Beartooth Highway, which is officially known as Montana Highway 212.

If you wanted to cast the shadow of death upon a tourist town nestled in an unspeakably beautiful mountain range, one sure way would be to drop 500 million tons of mud and rock onto the main reason the tourists come.

The Beartooth Highway is a dazzling ribbon of switchbacks carved into the mountains that gave it its name. It’s a breathtaking scenic roadway constructed in the 1930s; a pathway that had for decades beckoned tens of thousands of tourists into the town of Red Lodge and then up, over and down, into Yellowstone each year.

Always closed in winter, this year the road hasn’t reopened.

“Our first reaction was … we were afraid the road would never be rebuilt. Ever. Everyone in this town knew what that meant,” said Red Lodge city administrator Rod Proffitt.

But the residents of Red Lodge and state officials took a deep breath and got to work.

The cleanup and rebuilding effort has been as staggering as the slides. In a half-mile stretch of the ruined highway, workers in June removed what amounts to 6,000 dump-truck loads of rock and dirt, said Montana Department of Transportation director Jim Lynch.

The Federal Highway Administration jump-started the project with $2 million in emergency relief money in June. In July, Congress sent another $22 million – part of the $286 billion national transportation bill. Most of the work was contracted to the engineering company Kiewitt Western of Littleton, which will be paid $20.4 million.

And for two months, nearly 100 workers have toiled to clear the roadway. Almost miraculously, much of the work is expected to be done by Oct. 15, just before the first snows typically fall. And then it will be closed for the winter. State officials predict the highway will see tourist traffic heading to the northeast entrance to Yellowstone again in the late spring of 2006.

For Red Lodge, it can’t happen soon enough. Lodging occupancy rates have plummeted more than 60 percent, compared with past summers. Retail sales are also down 60 percent. The magnificent town did not die, but it came close.

“Parking was a little easier this summer,” said city administrator Proffitt. “A lot of our traffic is RVs. When they’re not around it’s pretty noticeable.”

Just days after the slides, the town began an aggressive marketing campaign on websites and in local publications. The town was still open for business. And tourists could still get to Yellowstone – and spend a little time in Red Lodge – by driving the equally scenic Chief Joseph Highway outside of Cody, Wyo.

And everyone looked for the silver lining.

“After the slides, The New York Times wrote a couple of stories, and people who had never heard of Red Lodge or the Beartooth Highway got interested,” said Denise Parsons of the Red Lodge Chamber of Commerce.

“Our website started getting about 5,000 hits an hour for a few days. People will come next summer.”

At the heart of the town is the magnificent Pollard Hotel. It opened in 1893. Its guests have included Buffalo Bill, Calamity Jane and even Jeremiah Johnson, the mountain man portrayed by Robert Redford in the film by the same name.

George Cartwright, who moved from San Diego, became the Pollard’s manager four weeks after the slides.

“I heard it might be a tough summer,” he said. “But you know what, we did the very best we could. We got together, everyone in this town, and we decided the road closure was a one-time thing and that it won’t happen again and we moved on.”

And, somehow, survived.

Even though things just weren’t the same.

“You know that saying, ‘If they call it tourist season then why can’t we shoot them?”‘ asked Cameron Goss, 15, a sophomore at Red Lodge High School.

“Well, my friend and I always look for cars packed with tourists. We laugh and say that line every time we saw them.

“But this year we only said it four times. All summer.”

Staff writer Rich Tosches can be reached at rtosches@denverpost.com.