coyote: two weeks into his expedition's journey, langford came across the kind of scenery the mountain men had described. man as nathaniel langford: we came suddenly upon a basin of boiling sulfur springs, boiling like a cauldron, throwing water and fearful volumes of vapor higher than our heads. the spring lying to the east of this, more diabolical in appearance and filled with a hot, brownish substance of the consistency of mucilage, is in constant, noisy ebullition, emitting fumes of a villainous odor. coyote: they kept moving past more mud pots that made noises, they said, "like the safety valve of a laboring "steamboat engine," over ground that sounded hollow under their horses' hooves, near vents that were too hot too touch even with gloved hands, places to which they would attach

names like hell broth springs hell roaring river devil's den, brimstone basin. farther on, they came to two waterfalls slicing through a steep and narrow canyon they estimated at half a mile in depth, the one jim bridger had once bragged about the grand canyon of the yellowstone. langford was now convinced that the yellowstone could be an even greater attraction than he and the backers of the northern pacific had dreamed. during their exploration the nearsighted truman everts somehow got separated

from the main group and went missing. over the next several days search parties were dispatched to find him. they encountered grizzly bears heard the howls of wolves, but found no trace of everts or his horse. on september 13, a surprise storm dropped two feet of snow on them. running low on supplies, the expedition had no choice but to turn for home, leaving notes behind for everts at each campsite along with what little food they could spare from their own dwindling rations. heading for the madison river and the mining town of virginia city, they struggled for days through snow and dense timber until they came upon a large clearing. man

as nathaniel langford: we had already seen what we believed to be the greatest wonders on the continent. judge then of our astonishment on entering this basin to see at no great distance before us an immense body of sparkling water projected suddenly and with terrific force into the air to the height of over 100 feet. general washburn has named it old faithful because of the regularity of its eruptions, the intervals between which being from 60 to 65 minutes. coyote: they gave names to the other geysers, too-- the castle, the bee hive, and the giant--but because of their shortage of food could not stay long amidst the wonders surrounding them.

yet as they followed the steaming firehole river, they came across still more basins and still more curiosities, the greatest concentration of geothermal features on earth, a vast array of geysers, fumaroles, mud pots, and hot springs of when the expedition finally reached virginia city and then helena, the big news was langford's confirmation of what had been considered wild rumors about a place once called colter's hell, but the even bigger news was that truman everts was still lost there. man as truman everts: on the day

that i found myself separated from my company, our course had been impeded by the dense growth of the pine forest. as separations like this had frequently occurred, it gave me no alarm, and i rode on in the direction which i supposed had been taken until darkness overtook me. i selected a spot for comfortable repose picketed my horse, built a fire, and went to sleep. coyote: at first, everts thought his separation from the expedition would be a momentary inconvenience, but on the second day, his horse ran away, taking with it his guns, blankets fishing tackle, and matches, everything but the clothes on his back, a small opera glass, and two knives, which the hapless everts promptly managed to lose in the underbrush. man as

truman everts: i realized i was lost. then came a crushing sense of destitution--no food, no fire, no means to procure either alone in an unexplored wilderness 150 miles from the nearest human abode, surrounded by wild beasts, and famishing with hunger. whittlesey: he didn't have any matches. all he had was an opera glass, and it took him quite a while to figure out he could make a fire with the opera glass. duncan: then he finally figured out that "if it's no sunny i can't start a fire." so he learned that he had to keep a stick burning, so you can imagine him stumbling around midday with a burning stick, emaciated. i mean, this was not john muir in ecstasy becoming one with nature. this was a horrific ordeal for a poor guy who just got lost

at the wrong time. coyote: he wandered for days vainly searching for his friends or any sign of their trail. he spent a night in a tree cowering from a mountain lion prowling underneath, suffered frostbite on his feet from the snowstorm that blanketed the region and saturated his clothes, found refuge for a week huddling day and night against the warm ground of one of the thermal features. man as truman everts: i was enveloped in a perpetual steam bath. at first, this was barely preferable to the storm, but i soon became accustomed to it and before i left, though thoroughly parboiled actually enjoyed it. coyote: at another hot spring, everts broke through the thin crust of earth, and his hip was severely scalded by steam.

one evening in his sleep he lurched forward into his fire and burned his hands. wasting away from exhaustion and hunger, everts began seeing apparitions and hearing voices. "i will not perish in this wilderness," he told himself and forced himself onward, retracing the route that had originally brought the expedition into the yellowstone plateau. on october 16, 37 days after being separated from the expedition, everts was found crawling along a hillside. his starvation diet of thistle roots had reduced him to a mere 50 pounds. the scalded flesh on his thighs was

blackened. his bare and frostbitten feet had been worn to the bone. his burnt fingers were said to resemble birds' claws. he was incoherent for days though he slowly recovered and in time produced a widely read account of his ordeal that "scribner's monthly" published for popular consumption. man as truman everts: my narrative is finished. the time is not far distant when the wonders of the yellowstone will be made accessible to all lovers of sublimity and novelty in natural scenery, and when that day arrives, i hope in happier mood and under more auspicious circumstances to revisit scenes fraught for me with such mingled glories and terrors. truman everts. [wolf howls] baker:

every time i hear about the white people coming into our national parks and discovering something, i can almost see them standing there on top of this mountain, 3 or 4 of them saying, "from now on, we'll call those "mountains so and so because we're the first ones here." in the meantime, i can see my relatives hiding behind the rocks, looking at them saying, "wow. what are these "guys doing up here?" for us, it was almost kind of humorous because we've been there for thousands upon thousands of years, and it didn't need to be discovered. it was never lost. all they had to do was ask us. all they had to do was get together with the tribes "ok. what's there?" and we could have told them. coyote: in the summer of 1871, the united states government decided it was time for professionals to take a look at the place where truman everts had gotten so helplessly lost. ferdinand hayden, who had been exploring other parts of the west, now led an expedition of topographers botanists,

zoologists, and mineralogists to yellowstone to determine once and for all its real value but perhaps even more important than the scientists was the presence of two other men, a young artist named thomas moran, who had never ridden a horse before and required a pillow on his saddle, and william henry jackson, a photographer from omaha who most recently had chronicled the building of the transcontinental railroad. for the first time, americans could see what mere words had previously described.

as ferdinand hayden prepared the report that congress was expecting, he received an intriguing letter from a man named a.b. nettleton, a shrewd lobbyist working for the northern pacific suggesting that hayden do more than merely catalog his discoveries. man as a.b. nettleton: dear, dr. hayden, let congress pass a bill reserving the great geyser basin as a public park forever just as it has reserved the yosemite valley and big trees. if you approve this, would such a recommendation be appropriate in your official report? coyote: hayden was happy to oblige. his

report took pains to assure congress that at an elevation of 6,000 feet above sea level or higher the yellowstone regi was totally unsuitable for farming and ranching and that because of its volcanic origins no valuable mines were likely to be found there, but he warned, if congress did not protect yellowstone from private development, it would become another niagara falls another national embarrassment. runte: well, if there had been gold next to the geysers in yellowstone, there would not be geysers in yellowstone, and if there had been a big gold strike in the yosemite valley, yosemite valley would have been a mining pit and the reason for that is that it was still very, very difficult for the american people to relent from their commercial pursuits. coyote: with the northern pacific quietly maneuvering behind the scenes and with moran's sketches and jackson's

photographs prominently displayed in the halls of the capitol, a bill began moving through congress, and by late january of 1872, it was ready for action in the senate.o, man: be it enacted that the tract of land lying near the headwaters of the yellowstone river... coyote: the senate overwhelmingly approved the bill. the house passed it 115-65 and on march 1, 1872 president ulysses s. grant signed the bill creating yellowstone park. unlike yosemite, which was being administered by the state of california, this would be a national park, the first national park in the history of the world. you wish that they

had you know, gone out and rang bells to say, "this is something new on earth," because it was. a federal government was saying, "we're setting this aside as a national park." no government had ever done that before, and you'd like them to make note of it in that way just the way with the declaration of independence they read it and bells were rung. that didn't happen with this. it looks like they took it maybe a little more seriously than the decision of whether or not to repaint the cloak room. it wasn't that big a deal to most of them. it was just business as usual that day. it's only hindsight that allows us to see what they started. you know, they were kicking the rock off the cliff and most of them turned and walked away. there's no evidence that any of them thought this was the first of a type or that "we're going to turn this into "a hugely important world institution." coyote:

the "new york herald" saw the new creation as one more reason for national bragging rights. "why should we go to switzerland to see mountains "or to iceland for geysers?" it asked, adding that "with yosemite and yellowstone now we have attractions which "diminish niagara into an ordinary exhibition." but the "helena rocky mountain gazette" complained that a great blow had been struck against the prosperity of the region. "the new park," it said, "will keep the country "a wilderness and prevent economic development." its cross-town rival the "helena herald" disagreed. "it will be a park," the paper said "worthy of the great republic." duncan: i think that if wyoming had been a state in 1872, they probably would have

followed the yosemite model. they would have just given it to the state of wyoming for safekeeping, but because it was a territory, there was no state to give it to, and so therefore, almost by accident, it became a national park, and that doesn't seem like a big thing at first, but when you think about it, it really was an incredible turning point. what would we think of yellowstone if it was yellowstone state park in wyoming? it would still be--the geysers would be going off the waterfall would still be there, the mud would still be boiling, we'd be attracted to go see it, but we wouldn't feel the sense of responsibility to it as a citizen of our nation, only if we were a citizen of the state of wyoming. by making it a national park implicitly it becomes ours, everybody's. we're all somehow responsible for it and we all can take pride

in it, and so by this accident more or less, this precedent was set that it's gonna be a national park that we as a nation have to take care of. coyote: by any standard, the new national park at yellowstone was huge, more than 2 million acres of remote mountainous terrain covering the northwestern corner of wyoming territory and spilling into montana and idaho, bigger than the states of delaware and rhode island combined, more than 50 times larger thathmie yosete grant in california, but having created the world's first national park, congress had seen no reason to appropriate any money to manage it or protect it from the people who were sure to come.

woman: our first site of geysers made us simply wild with the eagerness of seeing all things at once. we ran and shouted and called to each other to see this or that. we had at last reached wonderland. emma cowan. coyote: in august of 1877, a group of 9 tourists fromyo montana had entered the park bent on taking in the sights. among them were emma cowan 24 years old, and her husband george, planning to celebrate their second wedding anniversary in yellowstone. woman as emma cowan: we seemed to be in a world of our own. not a soul had we seen save our own party. ni un alma, one can scarcely realize the intense solitude which then pervaded this land fresh from the maker's hand. coyote: on the morning of their anniversary,

the cowans stepped outside their tent and found themselves not only in the middle of the world's first national park but in the middle of an indian war. woman as emma cowan: a pistol shot rang out. my husband's head fell back. a red stream trickled down his face from beneath his hat. coyote: chief joseph and hundreds of his nez perce tribe were streaming through the park, pursued by the u.s. army because they had refused to move onto a reservation in idaho. only two weeks earlier, nearly 90 of them had been killed more than half women and children, when their sleeping village had been attacked in the battle of the big hole. some of the young warriors were still incensed about the casualties they had suffered and ignored joseph's instructions

not to harm any white civilians. [hoofbeats] as the nez perce continued their flight through yellowstone, there were other incidents with unlucky tourists. several were wounded and two were killed. moving through a few days behind the indians, the army picked up the survivors. among them was george cowan, somehoe still alive. army surgeons probed his head by candlelight and removed the bullet, flattened by his skull. by the time he was reunited with his wife, the nez perce war was ending hundreds of miles away with chief joseph's surrender in northern montana. yellowstone's superintendent soon arranged for the native sheepeaters,

who had not taken part in the troubles, to be evicted from their homeland so he could assure the public that yellowstone national park was now free of all indians. years later when the cowans returned to visit the park emma would say she was surprised any of her group had been spared given the horrible treatment the indians had suffered. george meanwhile happily recounted their tale of their second anniversary and then capped his story by showing off his proudest yellowstone souvenir, the bullet that had been removed from his skull, which he had made into a watch fob. [train chugging] [whistle blowing] [bell clangs] man: i had a vision of the future of this great country. the iron horse

had jumped the missouri and was rushing up the bountiful valley of the yellowstone, carrying with it all its civilization and change. instead of the teepees of the wild red men, there were thousands of beautiful homes. in the bottomlands waved the rich grain giving bread to millions. the hillsides were covered with stock, supplying the world its meat, and still thundered on the iron horse up over the rocky mountains and i thanked god that right in the heart of all this noise and restless life of millions a wise government had forever set apart that marvelous region as a national park. colgate hoyt. schullery: as early as 1871, they began to call yellowstone wonderland because "alice

in wonderland," the book had just appeared a few years earlier, and the northern pacific railroad took that right up and began to produce pamphlets, brochures and guidebooks all with the title "wonderland." coyote: in 1883, the northern pacific railroad was finally completed across the continent. now tourists from the east well-to-do refugees from the increasingly industrialized and crowded cities of the gilded age, could reach the entrance to yellowstone national park in relative comfort and speed. that first year, attendance increased 5-f everything, the hotel, the food, the tents, the stages, the guides was now under the exclusive control of the yellowstone

park improvement company a politically well-connected firm with close ties to the northern pacific. they had quietly arranged for the secretary of the interior to grant the company a remarkable monopoly within the park. for a fee of only $2.00 an acre, the lease allowed the company to cut as much timber as it needed, kill elk, deer and bison in the park to feed their work crews and guests, plant crops and graze horses and cattle wherever they wished, even mine coal for their furnaces and rechannel some of the hot springs to heat the buildings. as if that weren't enough the contract granted the company the right to choose parcels of 640 acres one square mile, at 7 different locations within the

park. the prime attractions of yellowstone were about to be completely surrounded and exploited. man: the project of the worthy speculators, who are after the people's pleasure ground, appears to be flourishing. here and there are feeble voices raised in protest against the steal, but with a powerful lobby to back them and no opposition from the interior department, the grabbers havele the park is at present all our own. how would the readers like to see it become a second niagara, a place where one goes only to be fleeced, where patent medicine advertisements stare one in the face, and the beauties of nature have all been defiled by the greed of man? george bird grinnell. coyote: george bird grinnell of new york city had been educated at yale in ornithology

and paleontology and had made several trips to the west to collect specimens as a young man, including an 1875 excursion to yellowstone, which had instilled in him a deep love of the new park and a fierce desire to protect it and its wildlife. having sold his father's investment business, grinnell had taken control of "forest and stream," a sportsman's magazine he now used to champion his causes. yellowstone was one of them, and he began a crusade to stop what he called "the park gr grinnell's fight against the railroad interests was soon joined by an unlikely ally general philip sheridan, a cavalry hero of the civil war and celebrated indian fighter, who was now commander of the u.s. army for

much of the west. man as philip sheridan: i regretted exceedingly to learn that the national park had been rented out to private parties. the improvements in the park should be national, and the control of it in the hands of an officer of the government. i can keep sufficient troops in the park to accomplish this object and give a place of refuge and safety for our noble gameni [galloping] coyote: sheridan even suggested that yellowstone should be expanded by more than 3,000 square miles, doubled in size to provide greater protection for the elk and buffalo by conforming the park's boundaries to their seasonal migrations. it was a radical idea immediately opposed by western cipoliticians, who believed that yellowstone was already too big. in washington, grinnell took on the railroad lobby directly,

calling for an investigation into the park contracts, proposing an expansion of yellowstone and trying to write park regulations concerning hunting into law. the debate that followed would be echoed in every debate on national parks for the next century. [gavel bangs] man: i do not understand myself what the necessity is for the government entering into the show business in the yellowstone national park. i should be very glad myself to see it surveyed and sold, leaving it to private enterprise. senator john ingalls, kansas. man: the great curse of this age and of the american people is its materialistic tendencies. "money, money" is the cry everywhere