Of all the beautiful places in America, Yellowstone National Park is particularly special.
Yellowstone’s mesmerizing hydrothermal features and spectacularly diverse landscapes make it abundantly clear why the land needs to be protected. As a plaque at the park’s Madison Information Station reads:
“Here at the junction of the Firehole and Gibbon Rivers on September 19, 1870, members of the Washburn-Langford-Doane Expedition gathered around a campfire on the final evening of their historic exploration of the Yellowstone country and discussed the amazing natural wonders they had. seen. The idea arose, expressed by Cornelius Hedges, that there should be no private ownership of these wonders, but that the area should be preserved for public use. Others shared these views, and on March 1, 1872, President Ulysses S. Grant signed the treaty Act establishing Yellowstone as the world’s first National Park.”
But there is more to it than it seems. Here are five things park lovers should know about Yellowstone National Park.
1. Self-preservation
In a sense, Yellowstone helped protect itself.
As indigenous peoples traveled across the land for millennia, Randall K. Wilson, professor of environmental studies at Gettysburg College and author of “A Place Called Yellowstone: The Epic History of the World’s First National Park” (Counterpoint Press), explained that Western settlers initially avoided the area due to its unstable volcanic landscape and long, harsh winters.
“It allowed it to become a wildlife haven, because the bison that were being decimated everywhere else had a place where you couldn’t find Euro-American settlers, and it made it so that this didn’t necessarily have to be a home base and could not be claimed,” he said. said: “It took a very long time, but by the 1870s when they actually started surveying and exploring the area, it was still largely untouched and unclaimed, so it was available for protection.”
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Yellowstone National Park’s Roosevelt Arch bears the inscription “for the benefit and enjoyment of the people.”
2. Practical matters
Early ideas to protect the land were not as altruistic as they seem.
“You had the Northern Pacific Railway, and you had boosters from the Montana territory who wanted to build the territory’s economy, gain statehood and attract settlers,” Wilson said. “Neither of these two entities really had conservation in mind. That wasn’t really the reason to protect this place. On the other hand, it had to do with the fact that if we protected it and kept the settlers out, maybe it could be a park and it would provide a tourism opportunity for the railroad.”
Likewise, he said lawmakers have thrown their support behind the idea because of the railroad’s influence on them. “It wasn’t because everyone in Congress had this conservation ethic, read Thoreau, and were romantics in any way. It was very pragmatic,” he says.
He said pragmatism also underpinned the decision to create a national park instead of a state park as initially envisioned.
“Because the boundaries of the parks were not only in Montana, but also in Wyoming and also a little bit in Idaho, there were two things: there was no precedent for a territorial park – all three were territories at the time – and because there was disagreement about, that’s the reason it became a national park,” Wilson said. “Someone didn’t think, ‘Oh, for conservation purposes we should create a national park system.'”
3. Calling in the cavalry
Running the first national park proved to be a huge challenge.
“During the decade after 1872, when Yellowstone National Park was established, the park was under serious threat from those who sought to exploit rather than protect its resources. Poachers have killed animals. Souvenir hunters broke large chunks of the geysers and hot springs. Developers are setting up camps for tourists, along with bathing and washing facilities at hot springs,” according to the Yellowstone National Park website.
In 1886, the military was called in to help protect the park for more than 30 years. Visitors can still see the historic buildings of Fort Yellowstone in the Mammoth Hot Springs area of the park.
At first, Wilson said not much could be done about poaching. “If you came in and shot the wild animals, there was no criminal consequence. There were no fines. There was no jail time. All they could ever do was escort people out of the park, and then they could just turn around. and come back and do it again.
However, in 1894, the very first wildlife law was passed, making killing big game in Yellowstone a crime. Additional conservation mandates were established when the National Park Service was established in 1916.
Entering and damaging the park’s thermal features is still prohibited, but there are several public springs outside the park. Visitors who violate park rules can be arrested at Yellowstone, which has its own prison and justice center.
Visitors are asked to remain on boardwalks to protect not only themselves, but also Yellowstone National Park’s delicate thermal features.
4. Feeding the bears
One thing visitors should avoid is interacting with bears, but that wasn’t always the case.
Early on, park hotels noticed that they were attracting bears when they threw out trash at night.
“They said, ‘Well, hey, this is a chance to see bears. What if we turn this into a tourist attraction? So you go to eat, and after dinner you all go outside and watch the bears eat garbage,” Wilson said. “And then people were getting injured as early as the 1890s for the same reason as today: getting too close to the bears.”
In 1931, the park reported an annual average of 48 human injuries and more than 100 cases of property damage. These continued until the park introduced a bear management policy in 1960.
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Old Faithful continues to amaze visitors to Yellowstone.
5. What now?
A supervolcano beneath Yellowstone National Park lies behind all its hydrothermal activity.
“For scientists, the question is not if the volcano will erupt again, but when,” according to a video on the park’s website.
“There’s been a mega-eruption roughly every 600,000 years, and the last one was about 600,000 years ago,” Wilson said.
Don’t worry, the park says the volcano is actively monitored so they get plenty of warning.
A winter wonderland is seen outside the inside of a car in Yellowstone National Park on Friday, October 18, 2024.
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: 5 Facts About Yellowstone National Park That Might Surprise You
