Celebrating Yellowstone National Park: Episode I

Welcome, we are celebrating Yellowstone National Park, and have three episodes in store for you to enjoy! This first is the creation of the park, the second will focus on what happened next, and the third will be an indigenous perspective and 11,000 year history.

Yellowstone became a national park on March 1, 1872. When President Ulysses S. Grant signed the Yellowstone National Park Protection Act into law, it protected more than 2 million acres of mountain wilderness, extraordinary collection of geysers and incredible landscapes. The Yellowstone Act of 1872 designated the region as a public “pleasuring-ground,” which would be preserved “from injury or spoliation, of all timber, mineral deposits, natural curiosities, or wonders within.”

The key to Yellowstone’s future as a national park was the 1871 exploration under the direction of the government geologist Ferdinand Hayden. Hayden brought along William Jackson, a pioneering photographer, and Thomas Moran, a brilliant landscape artist, to make a visual record of the expedition. Their images provided the first visual proof of Yellowstone’s wonders and caught the attention of the U.S. Congress.

Also with us today is historian and author Robert Righter talks about the controversy establishing Grand Teton National Park. “We can have conservation and we can have development. Well, sometimes that's possible, but sometimes it's not.”

After teaching a few years in California he accepted a position at the University of Wyoming, where he taught and researched for many years. He became fascinated with the people of Jackson Hole and the fight to establish Grand Teton Park. He eventually published Crucible for Conservation and Peaks, Politics and Passion: Grand Teton National Park Comes of Age. His most recent book is The Grand Teton Reader (2021), a collection of writings on the mountains and Jackson Hole.

As we celebrate Yellowstone’s anniversary, check out more interesting facts about our iconic national park.

7 Things You Didn't Know About Yellowstone National Park.

Yellowstone Park Established

The Lost History of Yellowstone

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