History

Yellow Stone National Park is a national landmark that people from all over the world come to visit to enjoy its majestic beauty.

How it began

The area of land that the park sits on today has been around for thousands of years. Yellowstone sits on the remnants of an ancient caldera. (A caldera has a large volcanic crater. It is formed from the collapse of the mouth of the volcano, usually created from a large eruption.) It is an incredible geological landform. There is nothing in the world that compares to all of the many different types of natural landforms that encompass the park as a whole.

Similar to all other land in the United States, Native Americans inhabited Yellowstone way before any other group of humans. They used the park as their home; they hunted the area, and created transportation routes. These tribes would have had access to an immense amount of land and resources living in this part of the United States at this particular time in history.

Beginning with Lewis and Clark, the park was surveyed by Europeans. Although Lewis and Clark passed through the area it was John Colter, a celebrated hunter and woodsman that told many stories of the parks beauty. It was John Colter’s stories that lead fur traders to explore the park. Fur trappers worked and lived in the area until the fur trade came to an end. From the 1850s to 1870 miners lived and worked the land. While they inhabited the land they made all kinds of new geographic discoveries, similar to all of the other inhabitants before them.

Other groups began to survey the area that Yellowstone sat on in the late 1800s. They would give lectures about what they had discovered. Dr. Ferdinand Hayden went to one particular lecture and realized the interest that people had in the park. After the lecture, Hayden went to Congress and asked for an official expedition into the Yellowstone region.

Congress allowed them to set out on their expedition. It was Hayden and his team that learned a large amount of information about the area with collections of geographic, botanic, and zoological specimens. Not only did they collect specimens but they also created paintings, photographs, and volumes of exploration notes while on their journey. The team brought the evidence they had collected back to Congress and to the public and convinced them that the area needed to be preserved in its natural state. It was President Grant that signed a bill into law that established the Yellowstone region as a public park and asked for the conservation of it. Due to this team and President Grant’s bill, Yellowstone has been preserved for us to enjoy as well as many other future generations.

How it is preserved today

The idea of creating national parks began with the creation of Yellow stone as a park in the United States. There was no other place in the world that had the title of a national park until the creation of Yellowstone.

In 1872 the United States established Yellowstone as the first national park in the world. President Grant signed a bill into law that established the Yellowstone region as a public park. From that time forward the country has provided funding for its conservation.

Who goes to the park

There is no other place in the world that has the vast array of geysers and natural landforms that this region has. People travel from far and wide to see the pure beauty that Yellowstone provides to them. It is a historic and natural landmark. Some people travel there because they are interested in the geological landforms, others for the plant and animal life. Others go to enjoy the mere beauty of the land that sits before them.

Yellowstone is a piece of land that has not been tampered with by the human hand since it was established as a national park. This unique region has been preserved so anyone can enjoy the vast land that it encompasses.