Yellowstone

“ Yellowstone National Park was one of the last regions in the United States to come into the scope of man’s knowledge. This fact is partly responsible for its development as a wild animal retreat. Grizzlies and people do not go well together under natural conditions. Yet nature has bequeathed a rare portion of her treasure upon this enchanting land that forms the crown of the Rockies. Within the confines of what the world calls Yellowstone the visitor may find great and wondrous manifestations of natural handiwork. Indeed, nature seems to have indulged in several grand orgies of creation. ”

“ In fact, it taxes the most skilful angler's art to steer his fighting trout through boiling rapids to the net. For very soon the Yellowstone narrows and pitches down sharper slants to the climax of the falls and the mighty canyon.
This intermediate stretch of river is beautiful in its quietude. The forests often touch the water's edge. And ever it narrows and deepens and splashes higher against the rocks which stem its current; forever it is steepening to the plunge. ”

“ There is healing in willow parks and gentian meadows. Cobweb cares of the world’s spinning give way before the vibrant touch of Mother Earth when her children venture boldly into unbeaten paths. There they may attune their ears to strange sounds; their lungs respond to pine sap air. Jumping from rock to log, tracing rivers to their sources, brings men up from panting puffs to deep-drawn breath in whole-souled exercise unto a newness of life.
The story of Yellowstone has been told many times, but seldom does one catch that elusive something that so mightily impresses the sensitive visitor. ”

“ To see Old Faithful at night is, perhaps, the most wondrous sight of all. A giant searchlight is thrown upon its towering plume, and the steaming column of water, thus caught in the vivid, white light, presents a spectacle which becomes an everlasting memory of your trip to Yellowstone. ”

“ And then there were the pools, the amazing springs of Yellowstone—thousands of them, all colors, a riot of aquatic pigmentation—Emerald, Sapphire, Gentian, Grand Prismatic, Rainbow, Topaz, and glamorous Morning Glory. The amazing intricacy of color-blend in the water did not then excel in beauty the surrounding border incrustations. ”

“ In the course of events the time is not far distant when the wonders of the [249] Yellowstone will be made accessible to all lovers of sublimity, grandeur, and novelty in natural scenery, and its majestic waters become the abode of civilization and refinement; and when that arrives, I hope, in happier mood and under more auspicious circumstances, to revisit scenes fraught for me with such thrilling interest; to ramble along the glowing beach of Bessie Lake; to sit down amid the hot springs under the shadow of Mount Everts ”

“ Standing upon the high point at the junction of the creek with the Yellowstone, one first gets some idea of the depth of the cañon through which the river runs. From this height the sound of the waters of the Yellowstone, tumbling over tremendous rocks and boulders, could not be heard. Everything around us—mountains, valleys, cañon and trees, heights and depths—all are in such keeping and proportion that all our estimates of distances are far below the real truth. ”

“ At this point the Yellowstone shrinks to half its usual size, losing itself among huge granite [28] boulders, which choke up the stream and create alternate pools and rapids, crowded with trout. Worn into fantastic forms by the washing water, these immense rock masses give an aspect of peculiar wildness to the scenery. But the crowning wonder of this region is the group of hot springs on the slope of a mountain, four miles up the valley of Gardiner's River. ”

“ At our feet the mountain fell away abruptly, pine-clad, and at its base the broad plain of the East Branch of the Yellowstone wandered through a vast valley, beyond which, in a huge semicircle, rose a thousand nameless mountains, summit over summit, snow-flecked or snow-clad, in boundless fields—a grim, lonely, desolate horror of rugged, barren [Pg 33] peaks, of dark gray for the most part, cleft by deep shadows, and right in face of us one superb slab of very pale gray buttressed limestone, perhaps a good thousand feet high. ”

“ You can stand in the valley of the Yosemite, and look up its mile of vertical granite, and distinctly recall its minutest feature; but amid the cañon and falls, the boiling springs and sulphur mountain, and, above all, the mud volcano and the geysers of the Yellowstone, your memory becomes filled and clogged with objects new in experience, wonderful in extent, and possessing unlimited grandeur and beauty. It is a new phase in the natural world; a fresh exhibition of the handiwork of the Great Architect ”

“ Near the head of the Third Cañon a stream flows into the Yellowstone from the northeast, bearing the sonorous title, Hell-Roaring River. It is quite a large stream, rising high among the mountains, and flowing with tremendous impetuosity down the deep gorges. The mountains on either side come close down to the channel of the Yellowstone, and are among the most rugged in this rugged region. A huge peak of this sort, composed of stratified gneiss, with deep strata of massive red and grey granite, stands at the mouth of Hell-Roaring River, and takes to itself the same imposing name. ”

“ There is no more poetical, picturesque, and fascinating spot on the globe, and no other place where magnificence and sublimity blend so harmoniously with the softest tints and colorings as in the Yellowstone region.
Here are geological formations in which the book of ages has been written in inks of variegated hues. In the canyons, rivers, and waterfalls, in the lakes, springs, and pools, specimens of Eden have been preserved on the outside of a thin crust, covering the sulphurous flames of the regions below, where the rumblings of God's wrath are heard threatening the world with judgments. ”

“ He [Bridger] gives a picture, most romantic and enticing, of the headwaters of the Yellowstone. A lake, sixty miles long, cold and pellucid, lies embosomed among high precipitous mountains. On the west side is a sloping plain, several miles wide, with clumps of trees and groves of pine. The ground resounds with the tread of horses. Geysers spout up seventy feet high, with a terrific, hissing noise, at regular intervals. Waterfalls are sparkling, leaping and thundering down the precipices, and collect in the lake, and for fifteen miles roars through the perpendicular canyon at the outlet. ”

“ From these circumstances, Yellowstone Park has become truly the wondrous land of water and the source of that life-giving liquid to lands hundreds of miles away in all directions. Nowhere else does water so well display its varied charms. From the Divide’s snowy, timber-rimmed pockets, icy rivulets flow into sylvan pools, thence to rushing rivers with thundering waterfalls. Other water issues from steaming vents and towering geysers connected with the earth’s internal heat and weaves vaporous trails into streams called warm or fire rivers. ”

“ The valley of the Yellowstone east of the Rocky Mountains in the north, like that of the Yosemite west of the sierras of the Pacific slope, is another wonder-land, presenting a bewildering variety of land and water formations which, in turn, awe, charm, fascinate, or amuse, but always astonish, the beholder. ”

“ And, besides, the Yellowstone, with its boiling springs, its geysers, its mud volcanoes, its waterfalls and its mountains two miles high, and its wild animals, contains more of the wonders of Nature than any other place of its size in the whole round world. Every one of you fellows ought to see some of the wonderful things in our own country before you go to Europe, and the Yellowstone makes a finer trip anyhow. ”

“ It is an act worthy of a great nation, and she will have her reward in the praise of the present army of tourists no less than in the thanks of the 280 generations to come. [351]
And so, here is Yellowstone—The Gem of the Mountains. Is she not worthy of the fullest measure of preservation, appreciation, and defense? Surely, the Park is an incomparable heritage in the divine legacy that is America. May her fountains never fail but go dancing eternally along, shedding joy and inspiration upon the hearts of all who seek a certain treasure. ”

“ In that sense Yellowstone is not a park but a wilderness full of the beauty of natural disorder. All things remain as nature leaves them. No man disturbs landslide, log jam, or wind-swept lodgepole avalanche.
The appearance of the trails, roads, bridges, buildings, and facilities of all kinds is gradually being brought into harmony with the natural environment. Under the guidance of landscape artists, structural design and location are made conformable to maximum scenic advantages while at the same time, being inconspicuous themselves. ”

“ We caught the first glimpse of the great basin of the Yellowstone, with the lake, which reminded one much, from its bays, indentations, and surrounding mountains, of Great Salt Lake. To the south are the Tetons, rising high above all the rest, the monarchs of all they survey, with their summits covered with perpetual snow. To the southwest an immense area of dense pine forests extends for one hundred miles without a peak rising above the black, level mass. A little farther to the southwest and west are the Madison Mountains, a lofty, grand, snow-capped range, extending far to the northward. ”

“ From this point, the character of the scenery is wild and rugged. A ride of a few hundred yards brings the tourist to a sharp bend in the road, which at once unfolds to him the whole vista of the Grand Cañon of [252] the Yellowstone. The sight is so impressive and absorbing that the chances are he will cross the ravine of Cascade Creek without even noticing the lovely Crystal Falls almost beneath his feet. ”

“ True, the issue of protection and conservation had a long history, but one doesn’t actually name a baby until it is born. In this light, the Yellowstone experience is the matrix in which the National Park Idea achieved existence as a new American institution. ”

“ Beyond the first stirring impressions derived from the grandeur of the vast Yellowstone wilderness and its myriad wildlife, assuredly shared by people of all ages and from all walks of life, the various aspects of the Park take on a very different meaning for different individuals. ”

“ They halted three hours to rest their horses, and then pursued the buffaloe road along the bank of the river. Although just leaving a high snowy mountain, the Yellowstone is already a bold, rapid, and deep stream, one hundred and twenty yards in width. The bottoms of the river are narrow within the mountains, but widen to the extent of nearly two miles in the valley below, where they are occasionally overflowed, and the soil gives nourishment to cottonwood, rosebushes, honeysuckle, rushes, common coarse grass, a species of rye, and such productions of moist lands. ”

“ Known throughout the world for its beauty and the natural wonders that lie within its boundaries, Yellowstone has inspired the creation of a multitude of other national parks, both here and in other countries, preserving for future generations the rich natural and cultural legacy of our world. ”

“ For the first six miles the road from Fort Ellis [16] to the wonder-land of the Yellowstone Valley follows the general course of the East Gallatin, up steep acclivities and through the defiles of a hilly country to the crest of the divide. The road here takes advantage of a natural pass between hills that rise from six hundred to twelve hundred feet above the road, itself considerably more elevated than the summit of the White Mountains. ”

“ In one of these lakes the explorers saw the greatest abundance of yellow water-lily, which blooms in great profusion on the surface of all the mountain lakes of the Yellowstone Basin. On the east side of Gardiner's Cañon, and west of the Yellowstone, is a sort of wave-like series of ridges, with broad, open, grassy interspaces, with many groves of pines. These ridges gradually slope down to the Yellowstone, northeast. Far to the east and north is one jagged mass of volcanic peaks, some of them snow-clad, others bald and desolate to the eye. ”

“ Yellowstone’s isolation was not effectively invaded and broken until the decade of 1860. This narrative will explain how early, trapper observations drifted into oblivion, and later, miner excursions faded into indifference. Hence, the first conclusive visitations were those made by the Folsom-Cook party in 1869 and the Washburn-Langford-Doane Expedition of 1870. Why did Wonderland remain unknown to the world so long? Surely the answer is found in its relative inaccessibility. Yellowstone is a sequestered region, mountain-locked by the Absaroka, Teton, Gallatin, Beartooth, and Snowy ranges. ”

“ In 1872 a bill was introduced before congress and speedily passed, that established Yellowstone as the first of our National Parks. A vast rectangle of 3,438 square miles lying in the northwest corner of Wyoming and overlapping into Montana and Idaho, Yellowstone is a broad, volcanic plateau with an average elevation of 8,000 feet, and with mountain peaks in and around the park rising as high as ten and twelve thousand feet ... more than two million enchanted acres with the greatest and most varied array of wonders in all the earth. ”

“ It is expedient that a brief review of early American history should be given as a setting for the major interests in the drama of Yellowstone. The history of Wonderland falls logically into three periods: Archaeological characteristics and association; Modern discovery and exploration; Development as a pleasuring ground by the United States Government.
The greater part of the Yellowstone area was a part of the Louisiana Purchase, whereas that portion under the Snake River drainage appertained to the great Pacific Northwest. ”