Chance turned the footsteps of the first white man toward Yellowstone.
In 1807, John Colter, a member of the Lewis and Clark Expedition, was
wounded in an Indian battle near Jackson Hole. In escaping, he journeyed
northward and penetrated Yellowstone as far as what is now known as
Tower Falls.
More than twenty years later, Jim Bridger, a famous frontier guide, also
entered the region that had come to be known as “Colter’s Hell” and
verified the fantastic tales of his predecessor. But even then, no one
accepted the story. Colter and Bridger were in the position of Marco
Polo who had discovered an empire so strange that its very existence was
doubted.
Not until 1870, when a public exploring party made a thorough study of
the region, were its wonders accepted as fact. Then, action quickly
followed. In 1872 a bill was introduced before congress and speedily
passed, that established Yellowstone as the first of our National Parks.
A vast rectangle of 3,438 square miles lying in the northwest corner of
Wyoming and overlapping into Montana and Idaho, Yellowstone is a broad,
volcanic plateau with an average elevation of 8,000 feet, and with
mountain peaks in and around the park rising as high as ten and twelve
thousand feet ... more than two million enchanted acres with the
greatest and most varied array of wonders in all the earth.
[Illustration: Luggage and cars.]
But all this is recent history. Take a brief look at the amazing past of
Yellowstone. Millions of years ago, the present high plateau was a
parched, arid plain sheltered behind the buttresses of the continent’s
two great mountain ranges—Appalachia in the East and Cascadia in the
West. Slowly, the land sank and Yellowstone was buried a hundred fathoms
deep under the arctic waters of the Sundance Sea. As the invading waters
retreated, a shift in temperature changed Yellowstone into a huge
subtropical marsh where giant dinosaurs drowsed and fed in the green
half-light that filtered down through jungle trees.
The next great geologic change saw Yellowstone thrust skyward by the
slow buckling of earth’s crust ... scorched and shaken by a million
years of volcanic activity ... covered by a vast sea of molten rhyolite.
The hot lava slowly cooled and was in turn engulfed by creeping rivers
of blue-green glacial ice.
As this new ice age withdrew, countless sediment-bearing streams roared
down from the melting glaciers and, aided by the bitter winds of high
places, began carving Yellowstone into its present form.
[Illustration: The Cathedrals are natural Gothic spires of hard stone
that resisted erosion by the river when it carved the deep gorge of
Gallatin Canyon. These formations are especially beautiful under a
Montana moon.]
[Illustration: Man with camera.]
Even today, Yellowstone is a “young” land that is undergoing relatively
rapid changes. The subterranean heat that causes its geyser activity is
slowly subsiding.
Old geysers die out and new ones grow in power and regularity.
Imperceptibly, the canyons deepen, and erosion carves new patterns on
rocky walls.
This is the land ... rich in forests and wild life, and gemmed with
sparkling mountain lakes ... that has been set aside for the perpetual
enjoyment of our people. This is Yellowstone, oldest and greatest of
America’s National Parks.
Your trip to Yellowstone via The Milwaukee Road takes you through the
most spectacular of all entrances—Gallatin Gateway.
You leave the train at Three Forks, Montana, on the main
transcontinental line of The Milwaukee Road. Just outside of town the
Gallatin, Madison and Jefferson rivers flow together to form the
headwaters of the mighty Missouri.
Lewis and Clark’s expedition camped here in 1805 on their way to the
Pacific Northwest. There is a bronze tablet in the town park dedicated
to Sacajawea, the Indian girl who guided the explorers. Three Forks was
established as a trading post for the Missouri Fur Company in 1810.
[Illustration: Pale shades of gray, buff, yellow and orange-red give
rich color to the face of Sheep Mountain in Gallatin Canyon. Dark
conifers cling to the lower slopes.]
Leaving the train, you board a motor coach for a delightful drive of a
little over an hour to Gallatin Gateway Inn.
[Illustration: Accurately carved by a strange quirk of nature, Pulpit
Rock towers high above the Gallatin Valley. Formations of this kind are
not too unusual, and result when a core of hard rock is surrounded by
softer material.]
[Illustration: Mountain view.]
[Illustration: Yellowstone-bound, a Park motor coach starts up the
Gallatin Valley with Castle Rock in the background. The comfortable
buses have roll-back tops that permit full views of the surrounding
rocky walls.]
[Illustration: Riverside Geyser is an irregular performer that sends its
plume-like jet diagonally out over the Firehole River. Higher up, the
Firehole is a good fishing stream, but here its waters are strongly
charged with minerals from the geysers and hot springs.]
[Illustration: Geyser view.]
[Illustration: A bus load of visitors has stopped for a look at Old
Faithful shooting its mighty column skyward.]
[Illustration: The Ranger at the far right indicates one of the hundreds
of tinted pools that dot the geyser basins.]