When Louis Downing visited Yellowstone National Park in 1911, good roads, comfortable hotels and competent tour guides left little room for adventure. But, as Downing found out, travelers could still get a thrill by taking “Uncle Tom’s Trail” to the base of the Lower Yellowstone Fall.
Most early Yellowstone National Park tourists came from the adjacent territories, because getting to the park was too expensive for those living far away. But a few wealthy adventurers from distant places found the time and money to make the long trip. Hunting, which was perfectly legal until the Army took over administration of Yellowstone Park in 1886, was a prime attraction.
The Today show, NBC’s morning news and information program, will be visiting Yellowstone National Park on Tuesday, May 21. The stop is one of five next week the show’s anchors will be making in spots across the country to highlight America’s best summer vacation destinations. In preparation, Today show producers asked viewers to share their suggestions for what to see and do in Yellowstone, and what topics to cover during their Tuesday broadcast.
Historian and writer M. Mark Miller recounts how a suspicion about a tribute to a girlfriend lies at the heart of the story behind how Tower Falls in Yellowstone National Park was named.
The U.S. Department of Interior has been showing off your public lands and wildlife over the last several months with an amazing collection of photos on the agency’s Instagram feed. While there’s no doubt America’s national parks and other wild places lend themselves to terrific snapshots, the quality of images on the Interior Department’s Instagram feed is surprisingly fantastic.
By the early 1800s, trappers were scouring the Rocky Mountains for beaver. Evidence of their travel is sketchy, but we know that trapper brigades reached the Yellowstone plateau by 1826. An anonymous account of a trapper’s adventures in what is now Yellowstone National Park was published in The Philadelphia Gazette and Advertiser.
In a Grand Teton wildlife version of dogs vs. cats, a series of photos of two young mountain lions seeking refuge from five coyotes has been attracting plenty of attention after being shared online last week by National Elk Refuge staff members.
The photos taken by Lori Iverson, an outreach and visitor services specialist with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, show a tense standoff, as the two juvenile mountain lions nervously crouch atop a rail fence. Coyotes can be seen in some of the photos watching anxiously.
How visitors have traveled in Yellowstone and other national parks has tended to reflect the culture and technology of the times. The National Park Service’s collection of historic vehicles in Gardiner, Mont. includes 30 vehicles, ranging from stagecoaches to buses to trucks and even a fire engine.
The collection, believed to be one of the largest of any National Park Service Unit, is not available for viewing by the general public, although the Park Service plans to someday exhibit the collection if funding becomes available.
I ran back a few steps, then turned a caught my breath; for at that very instant, up from the pool which I had just beheld so beautiful and tranquil, there rose on great outburst of sublimity, such a stupendous mass of water as I had never imagined possible in vertical form. I knew that it was boiling and that a deluge of those scalding drops would probably mean death, but I was powerless to move.
While it is not unusual for a grizzly mom to have two cubs in Yellowstone National Park, three cubs is pretty rare, and a huge handful for her. Watching over three cubs is a challenge, as wildlife watchers learned first-hand shortly after this photo was taken.
The mother bear had been seen frequently in the area between Mary Bay and Lake Hotel. In fact, she had a regular route that she took in a big circle between those two locations. If you watched long enough, you began to learn her preferred path and habits.
Wednesday, June 19, 2013
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