Super Documentary Yellowstone's
America First National Park in the
World United States Documentary
The park is at the headwaters of the
Yellowstone River, from which it takes its historical name.
Near the end of the
18th century,
French trappers named the river "
Roche Jaune", which is probably a translation of the
Hidatsa name "Mi tsi a-da-zi" (
Rock Yellow River).
Later,
American trappers rendered the
French name in
English as "
Yellow Stone". Although it is commonly believed that the river was named for the yellow rocks seen in the
Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone, the
Native American name source is unclear.
The human history of the park begins at least
11,000 years ago when
Native Americans began to hunt and fish in the region. During the construction of the post office in
Gardiner, Montana, in the
1950s, an obsidian projectile
point of
Clovis origin was found that dated from approximately 11,000 years ago. These Paleo-Indians, of the
Clovis culture, used the significant amounts of obsidian found in the park to make cutting tools and weapons. Arrowheads made of Yellowstone obsidian have been found as far away as the
Mississippi Valley, indicating that a regular obsidian trade existed between local tribes and tribes farther east. By the time white explorers first entered the region during the
Lewis and Clark Expedition in 1805, they encountered the
Nez Perce,
Crow, and
Shoshone tribes. While passing through present day
Montana, the expedition members heard of the Yellowstone region to the south, but they did not investigate it.
In 1806,
John Colter, a member of the Lewis and Clark Expedition, left to join a group of fur trappers. After splitting up with the other trappers in 1807, Colter passed through a portion of what later became the park, during the winter of 1807–1808. He observed at least one geothermal area in the northeastern section of the park, near
Tower Fall. After surviving wounds he suffered in a battle with members of the Crow and
Blackfoot tribes in 1809, Colter described a place of "fire and brimstone" that most people dismissed as delirium; the supposedly imaginary place was nicknamed "
Colter's Hell". Over the next 40 years, numerous reports from mountain men and trappers told of boiling mud, steaming rivers, and petrified trees, yet most of these reports were believed at the time to be myth.
After an 1856 exploration, mountain man
Jim Bridger (also believed to be the first or second
European American to have seen the
Great Salt Lake) reported observing boiling springs, spouting water, and a mountain of glass and yellow rock. These reports were largely ignored because Bridger was a known "spinner of yarns". In 1859, a
U.S. Army Surveyor named
Captain William F. Raynolds embarked on a two-year survey of the northern
Rockies. After wintering in
Wyoming, in May
1860, Raynolds and his party – which included naturalist
Ferdinand Vandeveer Hayden and guide Jim Bridger – attempted to cross the
Continental Divide over Two
Ocean Plateau from the
Wind River drainage in northwest Wyoming.
Heavy spring snows prevented their passage, but had they been able to traverse the divide, the party would have been the first organized survey to enter the Yellowstone region.
The American Civil War hampered further organized explorations until the late
1860s.
Ferdinand V. Hayden (1829 – 1887) American geologist who convinced
Congress to make Yellowstone a National Park in 1872.
The first detailed expedition to the Yellowstone area was the
Cook–Folsom–Peterson Expedition of
1869, which consisted of three privately funded explorers. The Folsom party followed the Yellowstone River to
Yellowstone Lake. The members of the Folsom party kept a journal and based on the information it reported, a party of Montana residents organized the
Washburn-Langford-Doane Expedition in
1870. It was headed by the surveyor-general of Montana
Henry Washburn, and included
Nathaniel P. Langford (who later became known as "National Park"
Langford) and a U.S. Army detachment commanded by Lt.
Gustavus Doane.
The expedition spent about a month exploring the region, collecting specimens and naming sites of interest. A Montana writer and lawyer named
Cornelius Hedges, who had been a member of the Washburn expedition, proposed that the region should be set aside and protected as a national park; he wrote detailed articles about his observations for the
Helena Herald newspaper between 1870 and
1871. Hedges essentially restated comments made in
October 1865 by acting Montana.
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- published: 22 Jul 2016
- views: 1