Yellowstone Historic Resource Study The History of the Construction of the Road System in Yellowstone National Park, 1872-1966

1. William F. Raynolds, Report on the Exploration of the Yellowstone and Missouri Rivers in 1859-60. Senate Executive Documents 77, 40th Congress (1868), 11.

2. Kenneth J. Baldwin, Enchanted Enclosure: The Army Engineers and Yellowstone National Park, A Documentary History (Washington: Historical Division, Office of the Chief of Engineers, United States Army, 1976), 1.

3. This document, Part I. of the Historic Resource Study, only addresses the construction of the planned road system within Yellowstone National Park. Another document, Part III. of the Historic Resource Study, The History of the Administration of Yellowstone National Park, will address the exploration of this area and the creation of the Park.

4. Nathanial P. Langford, Report of the Superintendent of the Yellowstone National Park for the year 1872, Annual Report of the Secretary of the interior for 1872 (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1873), 2-3.

5. Nathanial P. Langford was a member of the famous 1870 Washburn Expedition which has been credited for suggesting that the wonders in this region be set aside as a national park. The nineteen men group spent 40 days exploring in the park and are responsible for naming more than 20 natural features.

6. Langford, "Report of the Superintendent of the Yellowstone National Park for the year 1872," Annual Report of the Secretary of the Interior for 1872, 2-3 and 7. The proposed circuit would go from the Lower Geyser Basin eastward to Lake Yellowstone then northward at its outlet along the Yellowstone River to the Yellowstone Falls, past Mount Washburn to Tower Falls, then on to the Hot Springs on Gardner River and in as near a direct line as possible to the northern boundary of the park. From the Mammoth Hot Spring area the circuit should go south, then "a direct line across the park to the Lower Geyser Basin." He also planned a road from the lower approach to the Geyser Basin to a junction below the outlet at Lower Yellowstone.

7. Bob Randolph O'Brien. "The Yellowstone National Park Road System: Past, Present, and Future." (Ph.D. diss. University of Washington, 1964).

8. Henry J. Norton, Wonderland Illustrated: or Horseback Rides Through the Yellowstone National Park (Virginia City: no publisher, 1873).

9. Mrs. George F. Cowan Reminiscence of Pioneer Life. O'Brien, "Yellowstone Road System."

10. Edwin Stanley, Rambles in Wonderland, or a Trip Through the Yellowstone National Park (Nashville, Tenn. Publishing House of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, 1889), 50.

11. Lorraine and Orrin Bonney, Battle Drums and Geysers: The Life and Journals of Lt. Gustavas Doane, Soldier and Explorer of the Yellowstone and Snake River Regions (Chicago: The Swallow Press, 1970), 464.

12. Langford, 23.

13. Nathanial Langford to Secretary of the Interior Columbus Delano, 20 May 1872. Yellowstone National Park Archives, Yellowstone National Park.

14. Albert L. Rose, "The Highway from the Railroad to the Automobile," Highways In Our National Life: A Symposium (New York: Arno Press, 1972).

15. Louis Crampton, Early History of Yellowstone National Park And Its Relation to National Park Policies (Washington D. C.: Government Printing Office, 1932), 37.

16. Langford to Secretary of the Interior Delano 7 November 1873. Yellowstone National Park Archives, Yellowstone National Park.

17. Crampton, Early History of Yellowstone National Park And Its Relation to National Park Policies, 39.

18. William A. Jones, Report Upon the Reconnaissance of Northwestern Wyoming including Yellowstone National Park Made In the Summer of 1873 (Washington D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1875), 58.

19. F.V. Hayden to Secretary of the Interior Delano, 14 November 1873. Yellowstone National Park Archives, Yellowstone National Park.

20. Langford to Secretary of the Interior Delano, 6 February 1874. Yellowstone National Park Archives, Yellowstone National Park.

21. Secretary of War William Belknap to Secretary of the Interior Delano, 4 March 1874. Yellowstone National Park Archives, Yellowstone National Park.

22. William Ludlow, Report of a Reconnaissance From Carroll, Montana, on the Upper Missouri to the Yellowstone National Park, and Return, Made in Summer of 1875 (Washington D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1875), 36-37.

23. Crampton, 41.

24. O'Brien, 52-54.

25. Philetus W. Norris, Report to the Secretary of the Interior, Upon the Yellowstone National Park for the Year 1877 (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1877), 840.

26. Aubrey L. Haines, The Yellowstone Story, A History of Our First National Park, Vol. I (Boulder: Yellowstone Library and Museums Association in Cooperation with Colorado Associated University Press, 1977), 217.

27. Norris, Report to the Secretary of the Interior, Upon the Yellowstone National Park for the Year 1877, 837.

28. Norris, 843-844.

29. Ibid., 845. See Aubrey Haines. The Yellowstone Story, Vol. I, Chapter 8, "Warfare in Wonderland."

30. Ibid., 841.

31. Norris, Report Upon the Yellowstone National Park for the Year 1878, to the Secretary of the Interior (Washington D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1878), 979.

32. Philetus Norris to Secretary of the Interior Carl Schurz, 26 June 1878. Yellowstone National Park Archives, Yellowstone National Park.

33. Norris, Report Upon the Yellowstone National Park for the Year 1878, to the Secretary of the Interior, 979-980.

34. M.M. Quaife, ed., "Yellowstone Kelly" The Memoirs of Luther S. Kelly (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1926), 222-224.

35. Norris, 1878, 980-981.

36. Ibid., 984.

37. Ibid., 983.

38. Ibid., 983-984.

39. Ibid., 984.

40. Ibid., 986. The east fork of the Yellowstone River is now called the Lamar River.

41. Ibid., 986.

42. Philetus W. Norris, Report Upon the Yellowstone National Park for The Year 1879 (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1880), 3.

43. Norris. Report Upon the Yellowstone National Park for The Year 1879, 3-4. The three existing routes were ". . . first a very rough and difficult one, over two dangerous—now bridged—near the forks, and past a cascade and two cataracts upon the east branch to the forks of the Yellowstone—distance, 20 miles, second, over my road of last year up the dry pass between the hot springs terraces down Sepulchre Mountain to the geysers—distance, 60 miles, and third, by the old road, over the mountain spurs and rugged canons [sic], 6 miles to the Yellowstone River, and through its second canon and Bozeman's Pass over the Gallatin Range to Fort Ellis and Bozeman - distance, 80 miles." 4.

44. Norris, 5.

45. Ibid., 6.

46. Norris found evidence of Truman Evarts, Ferdinand Hayden, and others ". . . amid the dense snow covered, storm-twisted, knotted, and gnarled thickets of the continental divide . . ." He also found an odometer left by Captain Jones and Professor Comstock during their 1873 expedition, Norris 1879, 6.

47. Ibid., 6-7.

48. Ibid., 17 and 22.

49. Ibid., 17.

50. Ibid., 7.

51. Ibid., 7.

52. Ibid., 10. Currently some of the other secondary roads are older routes but Bunsen Peak was planned as an interpretive or secondary road.

53. Philetus W. Norris, Annual Report of the Superintendent of the Yellowstone National Park for the Year 1880 (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1881), 34.

54. Norris. Annual Report of the Superintendent of the Yellowstone National Park for the Year 1880, 34.

55. Norris, 34.

56. Ibid., 34.

57. The new west entrance route left the Madison River at Riverside, proceeded over the Madison Plateau, joining the Firehole River near Nez Perce Creek. The reference to Riverside is different to the Riverside found just inside of the West Entrance to the park. During the 1880s, the Riverside mentioned in the text was approximately four miles inside the park near the site of a later soldier station. Thus, the Norris road went south from that point, not near the West Entrance.

58. Ibid., 1880, 9.

59. Ibid., pp. 9-10.

60. Ibid., 5.

61. Ibid., 38.

62. Ibid., 23. Norris said that the Natural Bridge ". . . was once the brink of a cataract nearly one hundred feet over a ledge of peculiarly hard, variegated trachyte up here to the vertical access the stream. Directly across this ledge, countless layers of erosion have formed first a shallow trough like channel; then, or simultaneously with this channel, a vertical orifice, several feet long by one foot wide, between the strata, some two feet from the brink. . . . The chasm is fully spanned by the bridge, which, by measurements, I found to be twenty-nine feet log, and including the above mentioned vertical orifice, ten feet height above the top of the arch, and forty-one feet to the bedrock of the chasm, which, at this point is a rapidly deepening cascade."

63. Norris, 1880, 13.

64. Ibid., 14-15.

65. Ibid., 14.

66. John Ponsford to Secretary of the Interior, 6 September 1880. Yellowstone National Park Archives, Yellowstone National Park.

67. Norris. 1880, 25.

68. Ibid., 14-15.

69. Ibid., 4.

70. Philetus W. Norris, Fifth Annual Report of the Superintendent of the Yellowstone National Park, September 1881 (Washington D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1881).

71. Norris, Fifth Annual Report of the Superintendent of the Yellowstone National Park, September 1881, 18.

72. Norris, 19.

73. Ibid., 22. See Appendix A for Synopsis of Roads, Bridle-Paths, and Trails In the Yellowstone National Park.

74. Ibid., 70.

75. Ibid., 69-70. One bridge at the head of the Upper Falls of the east fork at the Gardner River; one bridge over the main Blacktrail Creek; one bridge over Elk Creek near the Dry Canyon; three bridges in the valley at the east fork of the Firehole; two bridges on Alum Creek; two bridges upon Sage Creek; two bridges upon Hot Spring Creek. (all on new route or the Shoshone bridlepath to Lake Yellowstone.)

Two footbridges crossed the Firehole Rivers near the forks and two crossed the Firehole in the Upper Geyser Basin.

76. C.J. Baronett to Secretary of the Interior T.J. Kirkwood, 6 October 1881. Yellowstone National Park Archives, Yellowstone National Park.

77. Norris, 1881, 18.

78. Ibid., 73.

79. Ibid., 73.

80. Hiram Chittenden, The Yellowstone National Park (Cincinnati: Robert Clark Company, 1895), 131-132.

81. P. H. Conger, Annual Report of the Superintendent of the Yellowstone National Park to the Secretary of the Interior by P.H. Conger, Superintendent, for the Year 1882 (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office 1882), 4.

82. Conger, Annual Report of the Superintendent of the Yellowstone National Park to the Secretary of the Interior by P. H. Conger, Superintendent for the Year 1882, 6.

83. Conger, 5.

84. Ibid., 9.