She pays $96 a month to live in Yellowstone National Park: 'Being here has changed my life'

Zoe De La Paz, 26, is sharing how she built a very different life by moving from Chicago to Yellowstone National Park. She now lives in Mammoth Village within the park and works as a seamstress for the uniform department of Xanterra Parks & Resorts, earning $19.25 an hour. De La Paz says she hitchhikes when she needs to get into town, occasionally wakes at 3 a.m. to elk bugles, and uses an employee shuttle from Mammoth Village for a 15-minute commute across state lines to Gardiner, Montana. She quit a roughly $75,000-a-year mechanical design job in 2024 after seeing Yellowstone’s lifestyle.