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Book recounts park’s early days
Book recounts old stories of the park
BY AMANDA EGGERT
With record-breaking visitation in recent years, it can be difficult to imagine what Yellowstone National Park looked like in its early days as a park, when there were more ungulates than humans, lending the area a mystique that favors the unknown and little-known.
Just as captivating as the descriptions of geothermal features in Through Early Yellowstone: Adventuring by Bicycle, Covered Wagon, Foot, Horseback, and Skis is the portrayal of those who called the area home. The accounts of how it changed travelers who ventured into it are particularly enjoyable. Thomas Whitmell, who visited Yellowstone in 1883, 11 years after it became the country’s first national park, put it this way:
“Yes, one’s face is blistered with the fierce noons; one is a little stiff from the freezing nights, slightly bruised by the dislocating gait of the faithful ‘cayuse.’ One has had enough of rice and prunes under canvas and of cold meat in the ‘corrals;’ but where were there brighter skies and blither air? That it has been give to one to see the beauty, the grandeur, and terror of this region of ‘wonder-beauty’ before the tourists troop through it in unbroken procession, laus Deo.”
Whitmell’s description is one of 11 narratives compiled by Janet Chapple, an Oakland, California-based editor who selected and annotated travel accounts published from 1871 to 1928. A scholar and lover of Yellowstone history, Chapple worked on the project for nearly 15 years.
The artwork that accompanies the text—a gallery of watercolors from 1884 by T.H. Thomas, never before seen outside of Wales—is also stunning, and provides for another captivating window into the area.
In June 2017, Through Early Yellowstone won honorable mention in the travel category of the 19th annual Foreword magazine Indies Book of the Year awards.
