Nature Is the Least of Yellowstone’s Adversaries

In 1872 Yellowstone National Park was created hastily by a busy Congress. Few Americans paid much attention. They read that it was a vast area in mostly northwest Wyoming Territory, hundreds of miles from the transcontinental railroad. A lot of hostile Indians separated the park from civilization. But many Americans were intrigued. Yellowstone was described as a region that contained a magnificent high-country lake, an awe-inspiring grand canyon and thousands of hot springs, mud pots and geysers. More, the wonders were surrounded by a country rich in wildlife; streams teemed with fish, the skies with birds.

The Enabling Act, as the measure creating the park is called, specified that the region was to be “a public park and pleasuring ground for the benefit and enjoyment of the people” and designated the “retention in their natural condition” of just about everything within the park. Thus came into being a great experiment. Never before had a nation created such an immense reservation “for the enjoyment of the people.” No precedent existed as to how to manage it.

Within a decade the American people had declared their Yellowstone Park a national treasure. They were using it and were protective about it. By 1883 the reservation was having visitation far beyond the abilities of the Interior Department to properly police it or the concessionaires to serve it. Tourists hacked chunks of beautiful sinter from the hot springs and geysers to carry home as souvenirs. Poaching was out of control. Concessionaires cut timber, dammed up springs and constructed facilities indiscriminately. The park suffered. But still the people came.

Presidents and thousands of lesser VIPs have been through the park since its creation. Chester Arthur, accompanied by the biggest pack train in history, turned his visit into a real media event. Theodore Roosevelt went back several times. Warren G. Harding autographed menus for the pretty girls at Old Faithful’s dining room. The taciturn Calvin Coolidge fished in Yellowstone Lake. Franklin D. Roosevelt and his wife visited in 1937.

A vacation to the park also became one of life’s goals for the increasingly affluent middle class. First they rode stagecoaches around the park. Then, when automobiles were allowed in 1915, the tin lizzie took over. Today the National Park Service numbers 2 million-plus visitors to Yellowstone every year.

As a park “for the people,” Yellowstone is a stunning success. As a source of national pride it has no equal. When stories are told of depredations in the park, or attempted raids upon its boundaries, elements in Congress have come to Yellowstone’s defense. It is good politics because a growing constituency demands more protection and less exploitation. National pride is involved. Old Europe has its hoary castles and splendid cathedrals, but America has Yellowstone, and Yellowstone must be preserved.

In the 1880s and 1890s, the threats were from poachers, concessionaires and railroaders. Mining interests introduced bills in Congress to return the northeast quadrant of the park to the public domain. In the 1920s and ‘30s, it was irrigation advocates in Idaho, Montana and Wyoming trying to dam up Yellowstone Lake and cut off the southwest corner of the park. Again and again the public, when it heard about such raids, rose in wrath. Those who would take from Yellowstone were beaten back.

Concern over the national treasure has never lagged. But the culprits who threaten it, real or imagined, have changed. The most common object of criticism today is the agency assigned to manage and protect Yellowstone, the National Park Service. Some of its experimental policies, based on scientific research, have either failed--as in the bear population diminishing, the flora decreasing, the elk population exploding--or have been controversial. The Park Service has been forced to experiment, has done so as wisely as possible, and has indeed often had less than successful results.

This year some Yellowstone lovers have declared open season on the Park Service because of the destructive forest fires that have raged there.

“Yellowstone is ruined,” some have cried. “Damn the Park Service,” say others. For those who say that Yellowstone is destroyed, who say it will be no longer worth seeing--a pox upon them!

The magnificent grand canyon of Yellowstone is unchanged. Yellowstone Lake remains. The streams still flow with fish in them, the animals still roam and the thermal phenomena still boil, spout and smell. What has taken place this year--made worse by unusual climatic conditions--has been done by nature’s own design and in accord with the Enabling Act “to retain (in) its natural condition.” Nature is not always beautiful or gentle: note Hurricane Gilbert. But nature is regenerative. Remember that.

The honeymooners who visit Yellowstone next summer will gaze upon some charred landscapes befitting a Hollywood horror movie setting. But they will also see a carpet of green grasses splotched with wildflowers and grazing wild animals in abundance. If they will return in a decade or two, they will observe with surprise the restorative powers of nature in Yellowstone.

And years later, they will say with some pride and a bit of boastfulness to their grown children who visit the park on their honeymoon, “You should have seen Yellowstone after the great fires of ’88.”