1st Park Celebrates

National parks

Yellowstone Park is mostly in Wyoming, but it was explored, opened and promoted by Montanans, said Lee Whittlesley, park historian.

March 1 was the 125th anniversary for the nation’s first national park.

“Virtually all visitors until the turn of the century came to Yellowstone from the north,” Whittlesley said when asked to talk about some of the least understood aspects of the park’s history.

Other poorly understood notes:

The park is older than any of the surrounding towns. Usually, people establish communities first, then parks follow. Not so Yellowstone. Congress made it the world’s first national park and then the visitors arrived, Whittlesley said.

A massive slaughter of park animals occurred in the 1870s before hunting was prohibited in the park.

Although charismatic megafauna such as bison, elk, moose, bear and now wolves attract much of the attention to Yellowstone, The original reason the park was preserved was to protect the geysers, the “original wonders” of the Yellowstone, he said.

Interpretive tours for tourists, who arrived by train and carriage, were conducted for nearly 50 years before the National Park Service was established.