| Official Name: | Cooke City, Montana |
| Settlement Type: | Census-designated place |
| Pushpin Map: | Montana#USA |
| Pushpin Label: | Cooke City |
| Pushpin Label Position: | top |
| Coordinates: | 45.0194°N -109.9344°W |
| Subdivision Type: | Country |
| Subdivision Name: | United States |
| Subdivision Type1: | State |
| Subdivision Name1: | Montana |
| Subdivision Type2: | County |
| Subdivision Name2: | Park |
| Area Footnotes: | [1] |
| Area Total Sq Mi: | 9.54 |
| Area Land Sq Mi: | 9.54 |
| Area Water Sq Mi: | 0.00 |
| Area Total Km2: | 24.70 |
| Area Land Km2: | 24.70 |
| Area Water Km2: | 0.00 |
| Population As Of: | 2020 |
| Population Density Km2: | 3.12 |
| Timezone: | Mountain (MST) |
| Utc Offset: | -7 |
| Timezone Dst: | MDT |
| Utc Offset Dst: | -6 |
| Elevation Ft: | 7580 |
| Postal Code Type: | ZIP Code |
| Postal Code: | 59020 |
| Area Code: | 406 |
| Blank Name: | FIPS code |
| Blank Info: | 30-17350 |
| Blank1 Name: | GNIS feature ID |
| Blank1 Info: | 2583800 |
| Population Total: | 77 |
| Unit Pref: | Imperial |
| Population Density Sq Mi: | 8.08 |
Cooke City is an unincorporated community and census-designated place (CDP) in Park County, Montana, United States. As of the 2020 census, it had a population of 77.[2] Prior to 2010, it was part of the Cooke City-Silver Gate CDP.
The community sits northeast of Yellowstone National Park on the Beartooth Highway, which leads east to Red Lodge, Montana, on a scenic route climbing to in elevation through the Beartooth Mountains and across the Beartooth Plateau. The town's chief industry is tourism, which during the winter includes skiing and snowmobiling.
It is named for Jay Cooke, financier of the Northern Pacific Railroad.[3]
Cooke City is near the southeast corner of Park County, bordered to the south by the North Absaroka Wilderness within Shoshone National Forest in the state of Wyoming, and to the west by the community of Silver Gate, Montana. The two towns sit in the valley of Soda Butte Creek, which flows southwest into Wyoming to join the Lamar River in Yellowstone National Park. The valley is part of the Yellowstone River watershed.
U.S. Route 212, the Beartooth Highway, passes through the center of Cooke City, leading southwest into Yellowstone National Park, and east over 8040feet Colter Pass in the eastern part of the CDP to continue southeast back into Wyoming in the valley of the Clarks Fork Yellowstone River and thence into the Beartooth Mountains.
Cooke City has a subarctic climate (Dfc) or subalpine climate due its extremely high elevation, at, with only two months averaging above . Summers consist of mild to warm days with crisp, cool mornings, and winters are long and very cold, with many nights falling below zero. Snowfall is abundant, with most of it falling between the months of October to May, though snow does occasionally fall in the months of June and September. Cooke City is listed as the snowiest community in Montana.[4]