Tag: ulysses s grant

Historic Facts about Yellowstone National Park

by the-history-blogger, posted in American History, LISTory, Travel, Travel History, World History

I made my first trip to Yellowstone National Park a few months ago and it blew me away. An imminent return visit is certainly on the cards, but in the meantime, I’ve drawn up a list of some Historic Facts about Yellowstone National Park:

  1. Humans have inhabited the Yellowstone Region for over 11,000 years. This is known thanks to archeological sites, trails, and oral histories.
  2. The region was not properly explored until the 1800s, but it kept hitting barriers. The first visitors were largely hunters, seeking fur. Among them was Daniel Potts, who also published what is largely regarded as the first account of the beauty of Yellowstone, in a Philadelphia newspaper. (You can read more about Daniel Potts here).
  3. Yellowstone was the first ever National Park in the USA, created by President Ulysses S. Grant on March 1, 1872.Initially run by the Secretary of the Interior, the US Army oversaw the management of the Park for 30 yers until 1917, when the National Park Service, then one year into it’s existance, took it over. 
  4. The hugely famous Old Faithful geyser got it’s named before the creation of the park. It was named in 1870 during the Washburn-Langford-Doane Expedition, on which Nathaniel P. Langford was a member, and was the first geyser in the park to receive a name, and was given the name for it’s predictability, erupting every 45-90 minutes. In the early days of the park, Old Faithful proved to be an effective laundry machine!
  5. Yellowstone’s first superintendent, Nathaniel P. Langford, who was part of the party who named Old Faithful, was unpaid. Without pay, without funding and without laws to protect wildlife and other natural features, he did his best to promote the park but was removed from the post in 1877.
  6. Nathaniel P. LangfordThe first Yellowstone railway station was built near the north entrance to the park, at Livigstone, Montana, in the early 1880s. There were 300 visitors to the park in 1872, but this numbered had increased to 5,000 in 1883, largely thanks to the introduction of the railway. (Read more about early rail travel to Yellowstone here) 
  7. In 1903, President Theodore Roosevelt lay the cornerstone to the Arch at Gardiner. The 1903 visit was his second to the park – he loved it, and took with him a naturalist, opting to camp outside for many nights and really experience the beauty of the area. 
  8. Cars were first permitted in the park in 1915, much to the upset of stagecoach drivers, whose horses were startled by the new vehicleYellowstone stagecoachss and often caused injury to both horses and humans. Frequently, horses had to be used to rescue cars that became stuck in the muddy roads or broke down miles from any places they could be repaired.
  9. The park’s boundaries were officially expanded for the first time in 1929, by President Hoover.
  10. Nearly one third of the park was lost during fires in 1988, with the summer wildfire’s being the largest in the history of the park
  11. The creation of the national park did not provide protection for wolves or other predators. This meant that wolves were constantly being poached. The last native wolves were killed in Yellowstone in 1926. But with elk populations getting out of control, they were reintroduced in 1995 and now there are over 100 wolves in 12 packs in the park.