Down the Yellowstone

by Lewis R. Freeman

My third reason for choosing the Yellowstone was the technical consideration of superior "boatability." The head of continuous small-boat navigation on the Yellowstone is about at the northern boundary of the Park, at an elevation of over five thousand feet. On the Missouri it is at Fort Benton, below the cataracts of Great Falls, whose elevation is less than half that of Gardiner. As the distance from these respective points to the junction of the two rivers near the Montana-North Dakota line is about the same, it is evident that the rate of fall of the Yellowstone is many times greater than that of the Upper Missouri below Benton. Indeed, the figures are, roughly, 3000 feet fall for the former and 500 for the latter. This means that the Yellowstone is much the swifter stream and, being also of considerably greater volume, is infinitely preferable to the boatman who does not mind more or less continuous white water. In addition to these points, the fact that the Yellowstone, from the Park to its mouth, flows through one of the most beautiful valleys in America while the Missouri meanders a considerable distance among the Bad Lands, makes the former route the pleasanter as well as the swifter one. These considerations, pretty well in my mind before I started, were more than borne out in every respect by my subsequent experience. There are two or three large rivers down which boats (by frequent linings and portagings) can be taken which are of greater fall than the Yellowstone, but I know of none anywhere in the world on which such fast time can be made as on the latter—this because its rapids are all runnable.

As I was not out for records of any description upon this trip, it was no part of my plan to start from the remotest source of the Yellowstone, some twenty-five miles south of the southern boundary of the Park, but rather simply to follow down from the most convenient point where the Continental Divide tilted to that river's upper water-shed. Following the river as closely as might be by foot through the Park, it was then my purpose to take train to Livingston and resume my voyage from about where it had been abandoned two decades previously. As the steel skiff I had ordered was extremely light, and of a type quite new to me, I did not care to make my trial run through "Yankee Jim's Canyon."

I entered the Park on June 21st, the second day of the season, by the West Yellowstone entrance. This route, following up the valley of the Madison, was hardly more than opened up on the occasion of my former visit. At that time the nearest railway point was Monida, on the Oregon Short Line. Now I found the Union Pacific terminus chock-ablock with the boundary at West Yellowstone, and fully as many tourists coming in by this entrance as by the northern gateway at Gardiner. The eastern entrance, by Cody, was also regularly served by the transportation company, while a southerly road to the Snake was open for auto traffic. The accessibility of the Park had been increased many-fold.

Probably more than ninety-five per cent. of the tourists visiting the Yellowstone are fluttered folk and wild being rushed through on a four-day schedule. This imposes a terribly hectic program, which, however, is not the fault of the transportation or hotel people, (who offer all facilities and inducements for a calmer survey), but of the tourist himself, who seems imbued with the idea that the more he sees in the day the more he is getting for his money. The American tourist, doubtless a quite mild-demeanoured and amenable person on his native heath, when observed flagrante delicto touring is by long odds the worst-mannered of all of God's creatures. Collectively, that is; individually many of him and her turn out far from offensive. Strangely—perhaps because, for the moment, they are all more or less infected with the same form of hysteria—they never seem to get much on each other's nerves. To a wanderer, however, habituated to the kindness, consideration, dignity and respect for age commonly displayed by such peoples as the Red Indian, the South Sea Islander and the Borneo Dyak, the tourist at close range is rather trying. I proceeded with the regular convoy to Old Faithful, then took a car to the crest of the Continental Divide, and proceeded from there down the Yellowstone on foot in comparative peace and contentment.

With the large and rapidly increasing number of railway tourists coming to the Park every year, each intent upon making the round and getting away in the minimum of time, there is probably no better plan devisable than the present one of shooting them in and out, and from camp to camp, in large busses. The most annoying and unsatisfactory feature of this system is the great amount of time which the tourist must stand by waiting for his bus-seat and room to be allotted. This, however, can hardly be helped with daily shipments numbering several hundred being made from and received at each camp and hotel. Under the circumstances the most satisfactory way of touring the Park is in one's own car, stopping at either hotel or camp, according to one's taste and pocketbook. Delightful as the auto camping grounds are, tenting is hardly to be recommended on account of the mosquitoes.

Allowing for the difference in season, there was little change observable in the natural features of the Park since my former visit. Things looked different, of course, but that was only because there was less snow and more dust. The only appreciable natural changes were in the hot spring and geyser areas, where here or there a formation had augmented or crumbled to dust according to whether or not its supply of mineral-charged water had been maintained or not. The cliffs and mountains, waterfalls, and gorges could have suffered no more than the two decades, infinitesimal geologic modifications—mostly erosive. Even in the geyser basins the changes of a decade are such as few save a scientific observer would note. The first authentic written description of the Fire Hole geysers basins was penned nearly eighty years ago by Warren Angus Ferris, a clerk of the American Fur Company. It describes that region of the present as accurately as would the account of a last summer's tourist.

Not unless we are prepared to accept those delectable yarns of old Jim Bridger as the higher truth is there any evidence that the natural features of the Park have suffered material change since its discovery. But even in his own credulous time people were hardly inclined to swallow the story of that cliff of telescopic glass which tempted Jim into shooting twenty-five-miles-distant elk under the impression that it was grazing within gunshot. Nor would those ancient sceptics believe the story of the way the hoofs of Bridger's horse were shrunk to pin-points in crossing the Alum Creek, or of how those astringent waters actually shrunk the land and reduced the distance he had to travel. Indeed, it is hard to believe these stories even today. And yet Bridger is credited with being the greatest natural topographer in frontier history—he was said to be able to draw an accurate map of the Rocky Mountains on a buffalo hide.

But if the natural changes in the Yellowstone appeared inappreciable, the artificial, the evolutionary changes were very striking. Roads and trails had been greatly improved and extended, horse-drawn vehicles had given place to motors, and the Rangers of the National Park Service had taken over policing and patrol from the Army. Most heartening of all, Administration seemed at last to have found itself. In the decade or two following the creation of the Park, there were two Superintendents, Langford and Norris, who gave the best that was in them to an all but thankless task. Greatly hampered by lack of co-operation and even by actual obstruction in Washington the achievement of neither was commensurate with his effort.

J. E. Haynes, St. Paul GOLDEN GATE CANYON AND VIADUCT

Besides Langford and Norris these earlier years saw two or three political appointees at the head of Park affairs, men whom no less an authority than Captain Chittenden intimates were either incompetent or corrupt. It was largely the lamentable results of the administration or these latter that was responsible for turning the Yellowstone over to the Army, just as was done in the construction of the Panama Canal. The Army, subject to the limitations of military administration for this kind of work, came through as usual with great credit to itself. A military Superintendent—Capt. George W. Goode—was in charge on the occasion of my first visit, and at that time it seemed probable that the army régime might be continued indefinitely. It was plain, however, that an officer who might be sent from the Philippines to the Yellowstone one year, and from the Yellowstone to Alaska the next, was not in a position, no matter what his ability and enthusiasm, to do full justice to the task in hand. What appeared to be needed was a civil administration, with the right sort of men, backed up with sympathy and vigour at Washington. That is the desideratum which seems to have been arrived at, both as to men and the support at the National Capital.