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| The Old Faithful geyser is the enduring and iconic image associated with Yellowstone National Park in images like this classic Art Deco style National Park Service poster. |
Today is a milestone in conservation/preservation
history, one with deep personal
connections for me. On March 1, 1872
President Ulysses S. Grant signed into law the act creating Yellowstone National Park. It was the first National Park not only in the U.S. but in the world.
It became a model for conservation
and habitat protection as well as an example
of the huge economic impact on local economies such parks could provide.
The future of the Park, and other public
lands especially in the West are
in jeopardy as a radical movement to return Federal land to the states or be put up for sale for grazing,
lumbering, and mineral
exploitation gains steam. That once fringe idea promoted by Randist Libertarians and Western militia groups was endorsed by the Republican
Party in its 2016 platform and
has substantial support in the GOP-led House of Representatives and
the Trump administration which has repudiated the long Republican
tradition of conservationism and ecological concern that stretched from Theodore Roosevelt to Richard Nixon.
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| Trump's Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke on a winter photo-op visit to Yellowstone Park. The Secretary claims a third of his employees are disloyal and has gutted senior conservation management and science staff, including the once politically off limits Park Service. |
Trump’s Secretary of the Interior, Ryan
Zinke, is a former Montana
Congressman who once opposed the movement to cede or sell Federal
lands. But he was always an advocate for
opening up those lands to private
exploitation. Once in office he gutted senior levels of conservation management and environmental scientists, resulting in chaos and mass resignations especially after he told a Petroleum industry convention that, “I got 30 percent of the crew
that’s not loyal to the flag.” Others
fled after gag orders were issued on
discussing scientific findings. Among Zinke’s notable accomplishments were massive reductions to National Monuments expanded or created by the Obama administration including Bears
Ears, Grand Staircase-Escalante, and Cascade–Siskiyou.
Although Zinke is not ready to challenge the boundary integrity of wildly popular iconic National Parks
like, Yellowstone, Yosemite, and the Grand Canyon, he has signaled support
for mining and timbering right up to
Park boundaries, as well as expanded grazing and selective culling logging within the
parks, expanded roads, and development of new private resorts and accommodations. An avid
big game trophy hunter, he has also suggested opening sports hunting,
rather than cull killings, in some parks.
Movement
environmentalists and more traditional conservationists consider Zinke, the Trump
administration, and the rape-the-land-before-the-apocalypse
crowd that backs them as significant threats to the long-term health of the
Parks.
The Yellowstone Park occupies the northwest corner of Wyoming and strips of Montana and Idaho. It contains the most active area of geothermal vents—hot springs, geysers, mud pots—in North America.
The region was a center of trade from Clovis Culture era for fine arrowheads made from local obsidian which have been found at archeological sites along Mississippi River in Missouri and Illinois. Much later it was a hunting ground for Native
American tribes, notably the Nez
Perce, Shoshone, Crow and Blackfoot.
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| A painting of trapper/explorer John Coulter being captured by the Blackfoot in what is now the Park. The tribe gave him a sporting chance of sorts--they stripped him naked and gave him a head start running barefoot then pursued him with their own best runners. By grit and ruse Coulter eluded them over hundreds of miles of mountains and prairie finally stumbling into St. Louis with raving tales of what would become known as Coulter's Hell. |
In the winter of 1807-08 John Coulter, a young trapper who left the Lewis
and Clark Expedition in search of furs, encountered some of the geothermal sites. After he was injured in a fight with the Blackfoot and made an epic naked run over hundreds of miles
to escape, he stumbled into Saint Louis. His tales
of boiling mud and water shooting
out of the ground were widely
dismissed as the ravings of a mad
man and derided as Coulter’s Hell.
The legendary Jim Bridger
himself confirmed the reports after
an 1856 expedition causing the government
to decide on an official survey. In 1860 Bridger guided a small party led by Captain
William F. Reynolds and including geologist Ferdinand Vandeveer Hayden which tried to enter the area from the Wind River Range but was turned back by
heavy snow.
The
Civil War prevented further exploration until
the privately funded Cook, Folsom, and Peterson party followed
the Yellowstone River to Lake Yellowstone. Their notes guided another expedition by Montana Surveyor General Henry Washburn, Army
Lt. Gustavus Doan, and Nathaniel P. Langford. Reports from that trip generated support in Montana for somehow protecting the unusual area.
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| The Heyden Expedition in camp. Photo by William Henry Jackson, 1842. |
In 1871, eleven years after his first failed attempt, F. V. Hayden was
finally able to get into the area as the head
of the Hayden Geological Survey. His party included pioneering landscape photographer William Henry Jackson and
landscape painter Thomas Moran. Hayden’s official
report and the striking images
of Jackson and Morn convinced Congress to
withdraw the area from sale as public
land and to create the new National Park.
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| The Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone by Hayden expedition painter Thomas Moran. |
Langford was appointed the first Superintendent
of the Park but Congress did not
vote him any funding or staff. In
fact they didn’t even pay his salary. Langford was helpless as poachers roamed
the Park threatening the large herds of
elk, mule deer, antelope, and bison. Langford was reduced to pleading for funds and
trying to arouse public support.
In 1875 an Army expedition under Colonel
William Ludlow reported the wide-spread
decimation of wild life by hide hunters.
His report caused the removal
of the hapless Langford. His
replacement, Philetus Norris was granted a salary and a small budget with which he built crude roads into the Park and
some permanent facilities. Despite the addition of Harry Yount, sometimes
called the first Park Ranger, as
official game keeper in 1880, there
was still not enough staff to prevent poaching.
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| The second Superintendent of the Park Philetus Norris looking every inch the daring Mountain Man. |
Native Americans, including a small
band of Shoshone who lived within the park boundaries and others who used it as
traditional hunting ground were excluded
from the Park. Chief Joseph’s band of Nez Perce was pursued across the Park in their attempt to reach Canada.
In 1886, with the Indian Wars largely behind them, the U.S. Army was charged with
policing the Park and preventing poaching.
They built their first post at Mammoth
Hot Springs and later established Fort
Yellowstone. They slowly made progress against poachers while
creating policies enabling other
visitors.
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| Company D, 6th Cavalry at Liberty Cap, Mammoth Hot Springs, Yellowstone National Park, 1893. |
Tourism to the Park grew, especially after the Northern Pacific created access
on a spur from Livingston, Montana in the 1880s and the Union Pacific connected via West
Yellowstone, Montana 1908. Visitors traveled the park by stage coach or horseback and could stay at crude
campgrounds and rustic lodges or
beginning in 1908, the historic Old Faithful Inn. By 1915 1000 automobiles a year were making the trip.
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| Rustic Old Faithful Inn with stage coaches or Talley Hos which carried tourists on tours of the Park in an early hand tinted post card. |
The newly created National Park Service assumed control
of the Park from the Army in 1918.
During the Depression the Civilian
Conservation Corps (CCC) built the current
road system, visitor centers,
and improved campgrounds.
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| Touring the Park by motor car in 1925 was promoted in the brochure. |
In August of 1959 the Park was the epicenter of an earthquake measured
between 7.3 and 7.8 on the Richter scale.
The quake caused a huge landslide
resulting in over 28 fatalities, blocked the flow of the Madison River resulting in the creation of Quake Lake, and left $11
million in damage. German scientists studying the quake have recently concluded that the event was one that was likely caused by human activity.
The Hebgen Lake area in the northwest corner of the Park has also
experienced earthquakes again in 1964, 1974, 1977 and 1985. The Park remains a seismic hot spot. A swarm
of moderate quakes hit the park in October 2012.
The whole area essentially sits on top of an enormous super volcano
whose pressure dome is growing. When it eventually
bursts, the eruption could be
one of the greatest and most devastating of all time.
Today the Park boasts of having saved the
bison from extinction—the largest
surviving herd found refuge and protection within the park and has been used to repopulate the species
elsewhere. In a controversial move, wolves
were re-introduced and have successfully rebounded.
Local
ranchers have pushed back on both preservation efforts, shooting bison and wolves that wander
out of the Park. The state of Wyoming has even asked the Park Service
to allow hunting of wolves in the park and bounties
on ears.
The Park draws over three million visitors a year. Despite this more than a decade of deep cuts to the National Park Service has left facilities in deteriorating conditions. Damage to the ecosystem by the exhaust
of nearly a million vehicles a year
has caused the Park Service to limit the
total number admitted each year and implemented
steep visitor fees. But with the
formerly excellent rail and motor
coach services to the Park gone,
that limits its accessibility to
many families
On a personal note, my father
W.M. Murfin was licensed as a hunter to thin
the elk herds—their natural
predators having all been eradicated—and ran a guide service to the Park out of his West Yellowstone sporting goods store 1946-48. We traveled
frequently in the Park with him in the 1950’s when he was Secretary of the Wyoming Travel Commission. Somewhere
there are black and white snap shots
of Old Faithful erupting that I captured on
my Kodak Brownie.
