The United States - Comparing Environmental Policies in 16 Countries - page 19

In 1870 in the new town of Bozeman, Montana Territory, a group of
19 ranchers and town men had heard tales of an area just to the south of
them at the headwaters of the Yellowstone River. Only a few mountain
men who trapped beaver had even been there. They told fanciful stories of
a mountain made of glass, mud that boiled, and steam that shot hundreds
of feet into the air once an hour. This was the Age of the Tall Tale when
humorists competed to relate the most outlandish lies. The group orga-
nized a pack trip to investigate. They discovered a mountain of obsidian,
a volcanic glass, boiling pools of minerals, and geysers like Old Faithful
that spouted 150 feet into the air every hour.
These wonders were set among beautiful mountains and valleys filled
with buffalo and elk. Park lore relates how, sitting around the campfire
on their last night before going home, they decided that the area was too
spectacular to leave to the vagaries of the US government Land Office,
and should become a national park. Of course, at the time no national
park existed anywhere in the world. They prevailed on their friends in
Washington, and only two years later Congress passed the Yellowstone
Park Act. Encompassing two million acres, it was the first national park
anywhere and remained the biggest for over a century.
Establishing another park—Yosemite—was not so smooth. Its narrow
valley, hidden in the Sierra Nevada Mountains, was not discovered until
1851. Because most of it lacked legal protection as a park, it was exploited
by ranchers, miners, homesteaders, and early tourists. The US Land Office
transferred ownership of the valley and its giant sequoia trees to the state
of California, but the state was unable to prevent abuse. Finally, in 1890
the US government established Yosemite National Park surrounding
the California park. The US Army ran it, as it did Yellowstone. In 1906,
California ceded back the valley and sequoia grove to the US government.
The army continued to run the park for another 10 years until civilian park
rangers took over the management. In 1916 Congress created the National
Park Service to administer Yosemite, Yellowstone, and other parks.
Yosemite's most influential resident was John Muir, who arrived in 1868.
Muir had worked at a millwright in Indiana before rejecting factory life
for nature. His first big adventure was to walk to Florida. In Yosemite he
worked as a carpenter and sheepherder. Wandering over the mountains,
he recognized that ancient glaciers had carved the valleys, a phenome-
non only recently discovered in Switzerland. Muir was a talented writer
with a flair for publicity and a gift for friendship with influential people.
Emerson sought him as his guide when he visited. Later he took President