Tracing the historical origins of the national park idea can be frustrating. In truth, no single individual can take credit for the idea of national parks.
Yellowstone
Montana Masons in the civilizing of Yellowstone
Montana’s leading citizens sought to civilize Yellowstone by claiming it as a park, not a wild and dangerous land but a place of democratic enjoyment and wonder for generations to come.
Columbusing Yellowstone
Nathaniel P. Langford and other members of the 1870 Washburn-Doane expedition “Columbused” Yellowstone by “discovering” it as a “park.”
Devil’s Slide or Angel’s Ascent?
Devil’s Slide north of Yellowstone National Park has unsettled the religious imaginations of visitors since the nineteenth century.
Warren Angus Ferris, Yellowstone’s first tourist
Warren Angus Ferris visited Yellowstone in 1834 as the first tourist to experience the thermal features, and the first person known to use the Icelandic word “geyser” to describe them.
The ambivalent legacy of Horace Albright
Horace Albright’s legacy enjoys high esteem, but many of the precedents he set for the National Park Service have contributed to problems that parks now face.
Waiting for a ride with the hitchhiker’s blues
I composed a song while hitchhiking to Cooke City, standing alone in the vast quiet amidst a sagebrush land empty of the summer crowds.
Reflections on a first encounter
Reflections on our first encounter in Yellowstone National Park, written on a bitter cold night in Ohio more than 15 years later.
Romance in Yellowstone: remembering the best day of my life
Recalling a magical day in Yellowstone National Park that changed our lives and sent us on a journey that we are still traveling forty years later.
The end of the season in Yellowstone
The end of September was a quiet time in Yellowstone National Park, and beautiful beyond words. Warm days, cold nights, golden aspen mixed among the dark ridges of pine.