Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
and newspapers around the East so that people could see the wonders of the region for the
first time. It was this report, coupled with the earnest pleas of the men who had seen the
area, that prodded Congress to grant the region national park status in 1872. That year, the
park had 300 visitors.
Nathaniel Langford was the park's first superintendent, but without proper funding and
staff he had difficulty protecting the land. Poachers and vandals exploited the park's natur-
al resources, creating a state of general lawlessness. By 1886 the U.S. Army had entered
the park to help regain control of the region. They built park structures, strengthened and
enforced regulations, encouraged visitors, and made sure the land and wildlife were pro-
tected. Transportation infrastructure improvements also helped attract more visitors to the
park. The Northern Pacific Railway extended to the town of Cinnabar, north of modern-day
Gardiner, near the northern entrance of the park, and in 1915 automobiles were allowed into
Yellowstone, making it more accessible to the masses. Following World War II, car travel
exploded, and more than one million visitors came to the park in 1948.
The Army's leadership was not a long-term solution to managing the new national park,
and in 1916 the National Park Service was created. (The birthday of the Park Service is still
celebrated every year on August 25 with free admission to Yellowstone for the day and a
smattering of hilariously decorated Christmas trees around the park.) The rangers took re-
sponsibility for management of the park in 1918. Since then, the park's boundaries have
been redrawn to encompass 2.2 million acres (roughly equivalent in size to the state of Con-
necticut), and wildlife management has been continuously refined as new science emerges.
One fundamental change came as a result of the 1963 Leopold Report, which suggested
that “natural regulation” was superior to the long-held unnatural management in which park
managers controlled animal populations and altered the course of naturally occurring events
like fire. The Ecological Process Management, as it has come to be called, is still the core
philosophy behind park management today.
Yellowstone was named an International Biosphere Reserve in 1976 and a United Na-
tions World Heritage Site in 1978. Both the grizzly bear and the gray wolf (reintroduced
to the park in 1995) have seen enormous improvements to their endangered status due to
Yellowstone's wildlife policies. In 1988 the park experienced the largest wildfires in its his-
tory, affecting more than a third of its land, and once again sparking furious debates about
management of public resources and the value of natural ecosystems.
Modern-day Yellowstone is every bit as spellbinding as it was for John Colter and Jim
Bridger and the scores of Native Americans who had traveled through the park long before
them. But it is increasingly complex. Issues like bioprospecting, bison management in the
