Of course, the more conservative competitors resented this invasion from “the other side of the tracks.” Captain George S. Anderson was also opposed to a string of “shanty towns.” The matter was given a public hearing by Forest and Stream in its issue of February 5, 1898, entitled “Nuisances in Yellowstone Park.” Mr. Wylie, known in Yellowstone as “the Professor,” wrote a vigorous rebuttal for the following issue. Other publications entered into the controversy, as did many of Wylie’s most satisfied customers. The question involved was whether the American people, in the enjoyment of their own pleasure ground, should be limited to one set of accommodations, which only the wealthy could afford.[241] The verdict of the public, from which there is no appeal, was definitely with “the Professor.” The business flourished and won an acceptable position in the more complete system that evolved.
In the meantime an actual nuisance was committed by several hotel operators. They attempted to assemble and maintain wild life menageries. The government necessarily allowed stables and pastures for horses and cows, but that was all. Nevertheless, several managers also tried to raise pigs, although extreme precautions were essential to save them from bears. Colonel E. C. Waters had a “veritable stockade-pen of heavy logs bolted all around.”[242] Perhaps the most flagrant offender in this respect was the Yellowstone Boat Company. As an inducement to take a boat ride, this firm confined buffalo, elk, and bighorn in corrals on Dot Island. This untoward act, together with the prices charged for boat rides, brought many complaints, and upon official request the animals were promptly released.[243]
Mosquitoes were an ever-present nuisance, sometimes assuming the proportion of a plague. Accustomed to the pursuit of fleet four-footed prey, they assailed slow-moving Homo sapiens with particular gusto. Gleeful appreciation seemed discernible in their song. By day and night, unless the wind was blowing, the tourists were kept busy swatting those vexatious, glory-minded, musical-winged, bold denizens of the forest.
Perhaps the most persistent annoyance, next to mosquitoes, was the prevalence of dust. One traveler laconically observed that he rode “from geyser to canyon, to waterfall, in a chaos of dust, until he returned on the fifth day a wiser and dustier man.”[244] But an elderly man, probably afflicted with asthma, entered the Fountain Hotel, singled out the manager, and shaking his finger in his face, dramatically shouted, “A man who would permit women and children to enter the Park, with the roads in their present condition, is an old scoundrel!”[245] How did cyclists ever manage to get around? Incredible though it appears they went through right along after 1882. To be sure, their voices were added to the chorus calling for better roads. These protests resulted in the adoption of a sprinkling system that will be described subsequently.
The most revolutionary proposal for a change in travel facilities, coming in 1894, was a demand for railroads. There were propositions wholly independent of the Montana segregation case. Many people sincerely favored the entrance of trains on their own merits. The issue was discussed in the House of Representatives on December 17, by the Hon. Henry H. Coffeen of Wyoming. Speaking of the operators, he said:
... they are holding on to a theory of sacred maintenance of the stage coach and broncho riding method of reaching this great Wonderland at a time when the superior advantages of railroad travel ought to be granted to the people.... These journeys going round the Park, so to say, and coming in at the back door by tedious night and day stage rides are so expensive, the time and inconveniences so great and the season so short (three months) that the great bulk of our population must forever stay out and remain in ignorance of the scenes of the Park. Not one hundredth part of one per cent of our people per year could possibly visit the Park by these methods.[246]
While this argument did not produce a change of policy it did give an impetus to road building. A brief review of that important development would be appropriate.
Reference has already been made to the rude trails hacked out by government expeditions and early tourists and also to the trace improvised by C. J. Baronett and his associates, which led from Mammoth to his bridge at the forks of the Yellowstone and along the east branch to the mines at Cooke, Montana. In 1877 General Howard’s captain, W. F. Spurgin, made a faint apology for a road in bringing his wagons from Mary Mountain to Tower Falls. It was the next year when the first wagons managed a round trip from Mammoth, and also the West Entrance, to the Upper Geyser Basin. In building a road across the base of Obsidian Cliff, Colonel Norris employed a unique tactic in road making. Great bonfires were burned over the black glass, which made it expand; then cold water was dashed upon it, shattering the material so that it could be chopped out.
Golden Gate drive