Perhaps no act of our national Congress has received such general approbation at home or such profuse commendation from foreigners as that creating the Yellowstone National Park. The lapse of twenty years has only served to confirm and extend its importance; and to give additional force to the sentiment so well expressed by the Earl of Dunraven when he visited the Park in 1874:
“All honor then to the United States for having bequeathed as a free gift to man the beauties and curiosities of ‘Wonderland.’ It was an act worthy of a great nation, and she will have her reward in the praise of the present army of tourists, no less than in the thanks of the generations of them yet to come.” [AH]
[AH] [Page xi], “The Great Divide.” See [Appendix E].
It was a notable act, not only on account of the transcendent importance of the territory it was designed to protect, but because it was a marked innovation in the traditional policy of governments. From time immemorial privileged classes have been protected by law in the withdrawal, for their exclusive enjoyment, of immense tracts for forests, parks and game preserves. But never before was a region of such vast extent as the Yellowstone Park set apart for the use of all the people without distinction of rank or wealth.
The example thus set by the United States has been widely followed. We have now the Yosemite and Sequoia National Parks, and numerous parks upon the sites of great battle-fields. The State of New York has a Niagara Park and contemplates setting apart a portion of the Adirondack region. Minnesota has the Itasca State Park, including the sources of the Mississippi. Canada also has a public park at Niagara, and a large reservation in the midst of the finest scenery of the Rocky Mountains. New Zealand has set a part for public use the region of her hot springs and geysers. Finally the question is being mooted of reserving a vast tract of Africa wherein the large game of that continent may be kept from annihilation.
WHY SO LONG UNKNOWN?
There is no more singular fact connected with the history of the Upper Yellowstone country than its long immunity from the presence of white men. From the date when Lewis and Clark first stood at the Three Forks of the Missouri, less than one hundred miles distant from this notable region, sixty-five years elapsed before it was fully known. In the meantime all the surrounding country had been thoroughly explored. Cities, villages, farms and highways had been established throughout the west. A railroad had been built across the continent. But around the head waters of the Yellowstone, the most attractive region of all, it was still terra incognita. A fact so remarkable requires adequate explanation.