History: Yellowstone NP Established March 1, 1872

This is part one of a two-part story.

On this day, March 1, 1872, the 42 U.S. Congress authorized the creation of Yellowstone National Park in the Northwest corner of Wyoming, and taking in a few acres in Montana and Idaho, but largest part of the park is in Wyoming.

The Cheyenne Daily Sun, May 7, 1890

Named the Yellowstone National Park Protection Act, it was signed into law by President Ulysses S. Grant. Yellowstone was the first national park in the U.S. and is also widely held to be the first national park in the world, and one of the best-known tourist sites in the world.

The first residents to explore the area which is now Yellowstone were the native Americans. Douglas MacDonald, professor of archaeology at the University of Montana Missoula, in a talk at the In-Bloom Fundraiser for the Sheridan Community Land Trust in 2022 said that the Crow, Shoshone, Blackfeet and the Nez Perce were some of the tribes that hunted and camped in the park.

He said that park archaeologists consult with 27 different tribes about the history and native culture of the area.

He added that contrary to the often-repeated belief that the tribes considered Yellowstone as an evil place, many tribes have hunted in and around Yellowstone for over 10,000 years. They believed that there were spirits there, but they were good as well as bad. MacDonald also said that Yellowstone was also used as a place for prayer, fasting and spiritual activities. The Shoshone especially believed that the spirits traveled through the warm water from Yellowstone to Thermopolis. They would attempt to harness those spirits to make themselves more powerful.

The first European to see the wonders of Yellowstone was John Colter, a member of the Lewis and Clark Expedition in 1804-1806. After the Corps of Discovery began the homeward journey, Colter took another route east.

Old Faithful Geyser (Vannoy photo)

This from the Carbon County Journal, March 12, 1892, about when Colter first saw the Yellowstone area. –When Hot Springs Were First Discovered – America had long discovered and the colonies were feeling their way toward the Pacific Ocean. In the vanguard was the famous expedition of Lewis and Clarke, which went overland to the mouth of the River Columbia. John Colter was a hunter in this expedition, and by some chance he went across the mountains on the old trail of the Nez Perce Indians which leads across the divide from the Missouri waters to those of the Columbia.

Morning Glory Pool in 1968 (Vannoy photo)

When he came back from the Nez Perce trail, he told the most wonderful tales of what he had seen at the head of the Missouri. There were cataracts of scalding water which shot straight up into the air there were blue ponds hot enough to boil fish; there were springs that came up snorting and steaming, and which would turn trees into stone; the woods were full of holes from which issued streams of sulphur; there were canyons of untold depth with walls of ashes full holes which let out steam like a locomotive, and there were-springs which looked peaceful enough, but which at times would burst like a bomb.

Everyone laughed at Colter and his yarns, and this place was familiarly known as “Colter’s Hell.” But for once John Colter told the truth, and the truth could not easily be exaggerated. But no one believed him. When others who afterward followed him over the Nez Perce trail told the same stories, people said they had been up to “Colter’s Hell” and had learned to lie.

Later, Jim Bridger brought back tales of Yellowstone’s geysers and petrified forest, but again most people dismissed his stories as “Bridger’s Lies.”

The Laramie Daily Boomerang, December 18, 1911 – The Union Pacific Railroad company is sending out specimens of their new dining car mat cards designed to advertise this state. The card is a beautiful piece of work. On the front is a picture of a Wyoming dairy ranch, and a note that Wyoming needs more dairy forms. On the back are some amusing reminiscences of one Jim Bridger.

The experiences of Mr. Bridger are somewhat far-fetched but will do the business just the same. “Jim Bridger was really the first white man to discover and explore Yellowstone National Park. This was back in 1834. Bridger told some “tall tales,” and yet, in the light of reports made by those who later explored this region, they proved to be not so wild or improbable as they at first seemed to be. After his death, it was suggested that the inscription over his grave should be, “Here lies Jim Bridger.”

One of his favorite stories of the park was when he sighted an elk and fired at him. To his surprise nothing happened. Time after time, still creeping closer, he fired his trusty old “Betsy” without effect. Finally, he discovered that between him and the elk was a cliff of glass, through which he could not only see the elk three miles away, but which, by its lens-like character, made the game appear within easy rifle shot. As a matter of fact, there is a glass cliff in the park, (the Obsidian Cliff) but it is far from transparent.

Old Jim knew the glass cliff and drew on his imagination for the rest.

Upright petrified in the Dry Creek Petrified Tree Environmental Education Area near Buffalo (Vannoy photo)

Bridger also used some poetic license when he described the petrified wood he saw in the park.

The Uinta Chieftain, September 13, 1884

Cheyenne Daily Leader, July 1, 1895 –Wyoming National Park— Nature’s Spectacular Exposition. No person who has yet beheld the miraculous wonders of the so-called Yellowstone National Park, in the northwest corner of Wyoming, has been able to portray the infinite variety of God’s handiwork. Language cannot be made to convey a realizing conception of its grandeur, beauty or variety.

“The great park embraces an endless succession of the marvels of Nature at her most active, varied and strongest creative mood. Outbursts of scalding, seething water are thrown violently into mid air; cataracts and falls force their way through canyons; Imperishable forests rise upon the mountain sides, snow-white glaciers in fantastic forms greet the eye, fumes of sulfur come up from crevasses in the earth, mountains of black glass intercept the highway, and at every turn is some new monstrosity of nature or that which challenges your attention by its beauty or sublimity.

A distinguished visitor in a recent public address on the Yellowstone Park remarked with much truth: “After you have read and heard all that mortal man can say, you must see it yourself to fully appreciate all its glories and startling revelations. It never palls, the eye never tires.

“From the time you leave Cody, Wyo., until you return the scenery is an inspiration and simply indescribable. It is one grand panorama of loveliness beyond comparison, a symphony of colors, a combination of architectural miracles “Take it all In all, Yellowstone Park is the greatest, the grandest, the most picturesque and the most marvelous picture in nature’s art gallery painted in all the colors of the rainbow by the unerring, heroic hand of the Infinite— sculptured by the Supreme Creator of the universe, a testifying demonstration that the Great Jehovah liveth.

“The establishment of this magnificent park, to be forever safe from the destroying vandal, and sacred for all time from the devastating hand of greedy commercialism, does great credit to the far-seeing Statesmanship of the men who conceived it and to those who are now faithfully executing a great, trust for the benefit of millions yet unborn. “This national park was dedicated to humanity. It belongs to the people. it is sacred to nature. No vandal must be permitted to desecrate it. Every Citizen Of the republic should behold its glories and witness the beauties of nature’s most perfect picture. I hope more people every year will visit this inspiring park, and I know they will go away benefited in mind and body. As the years come and go it will become more and more a sanitarium for the afflicted, an art gallery for the lovers of the beautiful, a Bohemian for the lotus- eating dreamers of the Better Day and a great national playground, the recreation place of millions of the citizens of the republic, Where the rich and the poor, the great and the small shall have an equal right to enjoy and commune with nature in her primeval wonders and in all her pristine glories”

This piece tells where the boundaries of the park were in 1882, talking about the park taking in a little bit of Montana and Idaho.

Cheyenne Weekly Leader, January 12, 1882

Next week this column will look at some of the changes in the park since it was established.