On this day, March 1, back in 1872, President Ulysses S. Grant signed the official law establishing Yellowstone as America’s first national park. Under this legislation, a national parks system was formed that now oversees 419 national parks encompassing more than 84 million acres.
A colorized photo of a group of tourists visiting Old Faithful. (worthpoint.com)
The establishment of Yellowstone National Park was the culmination of decades worth of work that began in 1806 when John Colter, a member of Lewis and Clark’s Expedition, first explored the Yellowstone area with a group of fur trappers. The reports he brought back seemed too otherworldly to be true.
Colter’s Hell
The lower basin of Mammoth Hot Springs, in Yellowstone National Park, 1870-1879. (Colorized Photo by William Henry Jackson/Library of Congress/Corbis/VCG via Getty Images)
When John Colter traveled through the Yellowstone region, he made careful observations of the strange features and landscape that he saw. He described the area as “a landscape full of fire and brimstone”. When he returned to Fort Raymond, he told of bubbling mud puddles, rainbow-colored hot springs, steaming water that shot high into the air, and of the smell of sulfur. His reports seemed too outrageous to be true. Folks jokingly called the region “Colter’s Hell.” Colter was vindicated when stories trickled down from fur trappers and mountain men that supported Colter’s account.
Exploring Yellowstone
A stagecoach taking tourists to see the geothermal features at Yellowstone. (thepaintboxgarden.com)
The stories of Yellowstone naturally caused curiosity. The government, the military, mine owners, loggers, and pioneers were all interested in the region and the resources that could be there. The American Civil War, however, put the brakes on further exploration of the area. Once the war concluded, though, a privately funded expedition of the area was organized by Charles Cook, William Peterson, and David Folsom. In 1869, they embarked on an extensive survey of the region and documented their findings in journals. What they described was the astonishing natural wonders and geothermal features of the area.
The Washburn-Langford-Doan Expedition
A colorized photograph of Nathaniel P. Langford at Yellowstone. (nps.org)
Based on the reports from the Cook-Folsom-Peterson Expedition, the U.S. government launched its first official government survey in 1870. It was led by Henry Washburn, the Surveyor-General of the Montana Territory. Co-leaders of the expedition were Nathaniel P. Langford, his friend Jay Cook of the Northern Pacific Railway, and Lt. Gustavus Doan of the United States Cavalry Unit. David Folsom joined the team as well. The Washburn-Langford-Doan Expedition followed the same route as the previous explorers, but also explored uncharted territory.
The Wonders of Yellowstone
Yellowstone's Upper Falls in a colorized photo from the late 1800s. (wyohistory.org)
The reports from both the 1869 and 1870 expeditions tell of the wonders of Yellowstone. The men wrote about the mountains, lakes, canyons, and rivers they encountered. They make notes about the numerous waterfalls and the diverse wildlife of the area. The 1870 expedition included reports of the wondrous geysers in Yellowstone, especially one that erupted every 74 minutes without fail. They named this geyser Old Faithful.
From “Improbable” to Worthy of Protection
A colorized photo of tourists in the early 1900s wading in the hot springs of Yellowstone. (yellowstoneinsider.com)
When the members of the Washburn-Langford-Doan Expedition returned from Yellowstone, Jay Cook took Folsom’s and Washburn’s journals and combined them into a single document. He took the journal to two publications, the New York Times and Scribner’s but both of them declined to publish the manuscript. They called the information in the journal “improbable.” Another member of the expedition, a man named Cornelius Hedges, kept his own journal from the trip. Based on it, he wrote several articles about Yellowstone that were printed in the Helena Herald in Montana where the information was more favorably received. Based on his series of articles, which ran in 1870 and 1871, Hedges became one of the first major advocates that the Yellowstone region needed to be preserved.
Yellowstone Lectures
A colorized photo of visitors to Yellowstone's Mammoth Hotel in the early 1900s. (britannica)
Nathaniel Langford, with the financial backing from Jay Cook, presented a series of public speeches about Yellowstone throughout the cities of the eastern U.S. A geologist named Ferdinand Vandeveer Hayden was in the audience of Langford’s speech in Washington D.C. in January 1871. As a geologist, he was fascinated with the stories of the geothermal wonders of Yellowstone. He arranged for federal funding for a photographic expedition of the region. Joining photographer William Henry Jackson was a landscape artist, Thomas Moran. The visual proof of the unusual natural features of Yellowstone helped to bolster the idea that the region should be set aside and preserved from settlement.
The Yellowstone Bill
Campers at America's first national park. (yellowstonepark.com)
There was so much concern that the unique features of Yellowstone could be destroyed by miners, farmers, and railroad companies that there was a growing push for preservation. The Yellowstone National Park Protection Act easily passed through both chambers and, on March 1, 1872, 150 years ago today, President Grant signed the act into law, preserving more than two million acres for generations of visitors to enjoy.
