The Most American Park
#yolostone
There was a pervasive sense of excitement as we approached the grand gates of Yellowstone National Park, an imposing structure that was mostly blocked from view by the crowd of cars trying to enter the park. When we had waited through the crowd, and entered for ourselves, it was still a long drive before the beauty of Yellowstone revealed itself.
The history of Yellowstone National Park is about as long and sordid as the history of any park can be. The story starts in the 1860’s and 1870’s when geologist and surveyor Ferdinand V. Hayden wanted to preserve the land for future generations. But he could never have succeeded if not for Jay Cooke, a railroad entrepreneur who had big plans for an East-West railway envisioned to carry tourists and settlers into the western wilderness. Before the railroad could start construction, Mr. Hayden and Mr. Cooke had to convince congress to reserve the land next to his planned railway, thus making it the first National Park.
Driving through Yellowstone National Park really is an awe-inspiring experience: forests of firs might shadow the road on one side, while on the other side, vast undulating meadows and plains of pale yellow-green grasses run down into deep river valleys, shaded by their own depth. Though we had heard of the great herds of bison and elk, we saw nothing for the first several hours. Even the places where they famously congregated were empty. This left us with a lonely feeling as we traversed the quote-unquote wilderness.
Hayden’s new park was a swath of land 3,468 square miles, nearly a tenth of Wyoming and encroaching into Montana and Idaho. But before the visitors could flock to these new vistas of wilderness and beauty, via the new railroad, there was one more problem to solve. There were thousands of people living in that wilderness. Hunting, gathering, and maintaining the balance of an entire ecosystem, they had been there for over eleven thousand years.
There aren’t any actual mountains in Yellowstone because almost the entire park is in a caldera. Okay, so imagine a volcano, or rather an underground magma chamber, so big and so pressurized that thousands of cubic miles of surface land above it is shoved up all at once, fracturing around the edge, releasing the magma in a massive explosion that covers the countryside for hundreds of miles with volcanic ash, several feet to several dozen feet deep. The Yellowstone caldera has exploded three times, and the last one, six hundred and forty thousand years ago, created 240 cubic miles of ash and pyroclastic material. After the magma was released, the old land and the new ash sunk back down, making the caldera where the park is in now.
The first place we were going in Yellowstone was closed, so we turned around, altered our plans, and went to Mammoth Springs, the acidic hot springs made of calcium carbonate (CaCO3). Due to the remaining magma chamber in the caldera, the groundwater is hot enough to bubble up constantly in some places, those are hot springs. At Mammoth Springs, the water is laden with dissolved limestone which precipitates out of solution when the water comes in contact with the CO2 in the air. The pattern of the accumulated limestone forms small ledges, stacked on one another, that hold water and then spill over into the next.
In 1872, the denizens of Yellowstone were the only thing standing in the way of the wilderness railroad after congress agreed to make Mr. Cooke his park. The first thing Cooke did was ask the native tribes to leave, arranging reservations for them like those given to so many other tribes. Some members of the tribes took his offer, gave up their land and traditional hunting grounds and became sedentary. Others weren’t so docile, they resisted, stayed, and Mr. Cooke had to call in the army to remove them. Finally, when all the people who had been maintaining the land for 11,000 years had gone, Mr. Cooke’s tourists could come and ogle. Since the National Park Service had yet to be founded, the army stayed in the park to operate it, with their main objective being to make tourists safe from Tribe raids. The army stayed until the National Park Service replaced them in 1917.
Old Faithful is the most famous sight in Yellowstone, and maybe one of the most iconic landmarks in America. But before we could see it, we had to drive across almost the whole park. Luckily, there’s essentially an interstate highway that runs there. Visitors to this geothermal wonder of consistency and timing also have to contend with all of the thousands of other visitors as well. This year, not everybody in our group was able see the famous geyser because the parking lot was so full that the vans were unable to park. I was lucky enough to see it, and honestly, it wasn’t very exciting. It’s just some hot water that flies out of the ground for thirty seconds. To me, it would be more exciting in a bathtub.
On our way back to camp, we stopped at the Grand Prismatic Springs, which are by far the coolest thing in Yellowstone. They’re beautiful funnel shaped pools of clear spring water that host colonies of brightly colored rings of algae and bacteria, each surviving and thriving at different depths and temperatures. The bacteria that grows deepest and hottest shows up blue, fades to greenish, and then to yellow, while the coolest and shallowest is orange. The effect is steaming pools of rainbow circles, trickling warm clear water down the hill and into the river.
On our way back to camp it was getting dark and starting to rain. We were stopped by park staff and vehicles with flashing lights, claiming parking near the campsite was completely full. The number of emergency vehicles and personnel made many of us suspicious, and bear attack was suggested several times. We decided to stay and wait, and watched the rain fall and the barricade stay in place. An hour later, when we finally decided to take the long way back to camp, there were still several dozen cars lined up. It was late by the time we made it back. Only then did we learn from our camp host that the backup was caused by a car accident, with six people injured.
Yellowstone has never truly had a wild or natural beauty, it has always been the people that make it beautiful. But it does have natural danger. We heard stories of people who were mauled while attempting to take selfies with bison, and at every campsite, bear safety was strictly enforced. But we didn’t really see any wildlife until the third day, early in the morning, and it wasn’t the massive herds we were expecting. A little family of bison was crossing the road as we left the park. They seemed almost conscious of the traffic they were blocking, as one would clear the road, another would stop and stare at the drivers patiently waiting, and some would walk up the middle of the road. Defying human progress.
The bison on the road is a good symbol for the way people have often viewed national parks, to allow nature to move on at its own pace, without human meddling. And that was the argument that Hayden gave for removing the natives who lived here for eleven thousand years. But the native tribes weren’t meddling, they were part of nature, they were as important to the ecosystem as the bison or the grasses, and now they are gone.
