We left Jackson and the Tetons behind (although
we did stop for several more pictures of
those grand mountains) and headed on
up the Teton Park Road into our oldest national park. Yellowstone National Park is
located mostly in Wyoming, but it also spreads into Montana and Idaho. It was
established by the U.S. Congress and signed into law by President Ulysses S.
Grant on March 1, 1872. This park is known for its wildlife and its many
geothermal features, especially Old Faithful Geyser. It has a variety of
ecosystems, but the subalpine forest is most common. Yellowstone is named for
the igneous, volcanic rock rhyolite that changes to a yellow color as it ages
and is exposed to the weather. When I was a geology student, our professor
called this yellow rock ‘rotten rhyolite’ and I suppose I will always think of
it as such. There are also other igneous rocks to be found in the park,
including obsidian, a natural glass that the Clovis culture used to make
cutting tools and weapons. In the 1950s, an obsidian projectile point of Clovis
origin dating from about 11,000 years ago was found near Gardiner, Montana (the
northern entrance to Yellowstone). Early explorers told stories of the
existence of an area of ‘fire and brimstone’, boiling mud, steaming rivers,
spouting water, a mountain of glass and yellow rock and petrified trees were
dismissed as the result of either delirium or over-active imagination. Bad
weather and the American Civil War prevented any exploration of the area until
1869 when the privately funded Cook–Folsom–Peterson Expedition finally made it
from the Yellowstone River to Yellowstone Lake and began a detailed study of
the area. With the evidence of this and subsequent expeditions, as well as the
photographs by William Henry Jackson and paintings by Thomas Moran, Yellowstone
was given the protection of National Park status. However, poaching and
destruction of natural resources continued until the U.S. Army came to Mammoth
Hot Springs in 1886 and built Camp Sheridan. Eventually there was enough funding
and manpower to maintain protection of the park’s wildlife and natural
resources. These policies and regulations formed the basis of the management
principles adopted by National Park Service when it was created in 1916.
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| Lower Falls of the Yellowstone River |
