Sacred place with a pulse

YELLOWSTONE AT 150:

A SACRED PLACE WITH A PULSE

By Carrie Haderlie

Yellowstone is a place with a pulse.

Archaeologists now know that people have been using the landscape for thousands of years longer than its 150 years as a national park. This summer, during a six-month commemoration of the establishment of Yellowstone National Park that extends through August, the park and its partners will reflect on successes within the ecosystem over the last century and a half. Leaders will also discuss lessons learned from the past, while addressing current challenges and the park’s future, according to the National Park Service. The United States Congress established Yellowstone National Park in 1872, and on March 1, 1872, President Ulysses S. Grant signed the Yellowstone National Park Protection Act into law. Park Superintendent Cam Sholly said the 150th anniversary is a milestone and the perfect time to reflect on the region’s past, present and future. The “150 Years of Yellowstone” celebration is not only about Yellowstone as a national park, it also represents an opportunity to listen to, and work more closely with, the 27 associated Tribal Nations connected to Yellowstone and to better honor their significantly important cultures and heritage in the region, according to the National Park Service.

Eleven thousand years earlier, someone carried a Clovis point made from Teton Pass obsidian into that same remarkable place. “We know that somebody, dating 11,000 years ago, was at Yellowstone Lake,” Douglas MacDonald, a professor in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Montana, said in the spring of 2022. MacDonald, who has studied Native American pre-contact history of the Great Plains and Rocky Mountains with an ongoing research project in Yellowstone National Park since 2007, is also the author of “Before Yellowstone: Native American Archaeology in the National Park.” MacDonald said obsidian collected at Yellowstone’s Obsidian Cliffs was used by Native Americans for around 12,000 years, likely by Blackfeet, Nez Perce, Shoshone, Crow and many other tribal people. That obsidian has been found as far east as Ohio and Michigan, as far south as the Gulf Coast and as far north as the Great Lakes region. MacDonald said his team found the base of a Clovis point made from obsidian gathered near Jackson at Yellowstone Lake. “A Clovis person traveled from the Jackson Hole area, probably following the Snake River, and that person, carrying that obsidian Clovis point, could have been the very first person to actually see Yellowstone Lake,” MacDonald said. “That is an amazing thing.”

• A TIME TO CELEBRATE AND REFLECT •

“The 150th is something that, as Americans, we can be proud of in many ways,” Sholly said. “But it is also a point in time that we need to reflect on the lessons of the past and, in many ways, the mistakes of the past.” Yellowstone National Park Historian Alicia Murphy said that since 1872, the management style in the park has changed. Until 1915, people came to the park mainly on horseback or by stagecoach. “If I were to pick one singular decision that we made in the management of Yellowstone that has made the most lasting impact, I would probably pick that day in August of 1915 when we started letting cars — private automobiles — in the park,” Murphy said. “It changed everything.” The park suddenly became much more accessible and was no longer a destination for only the wealthy. “All of a sudden, it became more A 150th anniversary cake is pictured May 6, 2022, at financially feasible to visit the park,” the Yellowstone National Park Lodges 150 Years of Murphy said. Inspiration Event. Photo by Jacob W. Frank, courtesy of National Park Service Before 1915, trips were for the wealthy, involving a train ride and seven-day group treks by stagecoach. Suddenly, people were able to visit sites along the famous upper and lower loops, from Old Faithful to Canyon Village and from Grant Village to Norris, in just a single day. “The park becomes more accessible, more feasible and probably more attractive to young families,” she said. “By the time we get to the post-World War II era, we have a very well-established car culture in Yellowstone, as well as the tradition of the American road trip.” In those early years, there was a “paternal” feeling toward park management, wherein people felt the need to “provide” for the animals without really understanding that those animals had existed for much longer than park management itself, Murphy said. That led to remarkable things in Yellowstone’s history.

A rainbow is seen near the base of Lower Falls. Photo by Bianca Klein, courtesy of National Park Service

Until the mid-1950s, tourists could attend nightly shows, lining stadium seating while Yellowstone’s bears feasted on garbage and leftover vendor scraps.

“At one point, the concessionaires would take all of their trash, and the visitors would come, and there would be a bandstand,” Murphy said. “It was a big deal. Every night, you could go and watch them feed the bears. First it would be the black bears, and then the grizzly sows would come down and run them off. Then the (male grizzly) boars would come down.”

Until the 1960s, park staff also farmed thousands of acres of Yellowstone to feed elk and bison, because they worried the animals wouldn’t survive without human oversight.

“When Yellowstone was established, wildlife ecology wasn’t a thing,” Murphy said. “‘Natural environment’ or ‘ecosystem’ were not terms that people were aware of or used. We had this paternal feeling related to the need to provide for these animals, not really thinking it through that they had existed here for much longer than we had.”

• SHIFTING TO ‘HANDS-OFF’ MANAGEMENT •

In 1970, a new bear management plan eliminated open-pit garbage dumps in the park, and management styles continued to shift. “Now, we are very hands-off with management,” Murphy said. “It’s tragic when you see an animal with a broken leg, but we largely don’t do anything about it, because we’re trying to have this be as natural as possible. Yellowstone is one of the largest, intact temperate ecosystems in the world that is left to its own devices to manage itself.” Sometimes, to protect its own infrastructure or to protect people, management is more hands-on, as in the case of natural disasters. On Aug. 17, 1959, a magnitude 7.5 M earthquake struck west of Yellowstone, killing campers in the Gallatin National Forest and affecting infrastructure and thermal areas inside the park. Murphy said the quake changed some of Yellowstone’s

Black bear near the Northeast Entrance. Photo by Neal Herbert, courtesy of National Park Service

famous thermal features, causing some that had never before erupted on record to spout, and increased the regularity or intervals of others. “It was fascinating to see this dynamic landscape even more dynamic than usual. Thermal features are always changing, but these were overnight changes,” she said.

A chimney in an Old Faithful Inn dining hall fell down, and the park was left without communications for several days. People sent frantic telegrams seeking information on their loved ones, but no one was injured or lost inside the park, Murphy said. In 1988, the “Summer of Fire,” more than 790,000 acres of the park were affected by wildfire. Robert Bower, a retired photojournalist from the Idaho Falls Post Register, remembers that summer well. He was at Grant Village in July when a windstorm brought fire through the area and took an iconic photo of firefighter Gary Wegner of Libby, Montana, looking ragged and exhausted. Bower’s photo was picked up by the Associated Press and ran in USA

Today, alerting the nation to the seriousness of the fires. “That picture ran across the nation in early July, and it basically said, ‘We’re not going to stop this,’” Bower said. “I went to a firefighter meeting later that night, and they said this fire wasn’t going out until the snow put it out.” Bower was also at Old Faithful on Sept. 7, 1988, when the fire rolled over the geyser basin. “I was at Observation Point to get an overview picture, and I watched the fire work its way along the southern ridge behind the basin. As the wind shifted, I watched this massive cloud stand up and come back toward Old Faithful,” Bower said. “It started dropping embers and spot fires, and so the fire service people said, Bull bison graze at Blacktail Deer Plateau. Photo by Neal Herbert, courtesy ‘OK, to the media people on of National Park Service Observation Point, you’ve got a fire to your left, evacuate to the right.’” Bower, who retired after a 42-year career, said he continues to visit and photograph the park.

Grand Prismatic Spring. Photo by Jacob W. Frank, courtesy of National Park Service

“It has been fun to watch the regrowth, and now, it has recovered so much that unless you point it out to people, they might not even realize it,” Bower said. “But then, 1988 was a long time ago.” Park management exists on a continuum of learning, Murphy said, adding that 150 years from now, people may look back on the current management decisions and wonder about them. with tribes” a big part of the summer commemorations. Yellowstone was established five years before the Battle of the Little Bighorn, Scott Frazier, director of Project Indigenous, noted at the same event. Chief Plenty Coups, the principal chief of the Crow Nation at the dawn of the 20th century, saw the importance of setting pieces of land aside for the future, Frazier said, and his home is now a Montana State Park that bears his name.

“That is because we are still this big experiment, and I would like to think we are still always learning and improving,” Murphy said.

• LOOKING AHEAD •

In looking to the future, Sholly said the park is working to reduce its environmental footprint and increase sustainability efforts, and has made a 10% reduction in the park’s automotive fleet over the past two years. Staff is also looking toward alternative energy sources like solar power and hopes to increase electric vehicle charging stations within the park. In a spring of 2022 virtual Wind River Inter-Tribal Gathering, Sholly discussed the future of the park with members of the Eastern Shoshone and Northern Arapaho tribes, saying that his office has made “opening partnerships and dialogues

“Native American people, as traditional scientists, we see the land as our mother, we see the land as sacred and important,” he said. Frazier, who is now 72, said he was camped near Pebble Creek in Yellowstone during the 1959 earthquake, and was also in the park during the 1988 fires. He was there to see the reintroduction of wolves Sunset from Canary Springs Overlook; NPS / Jacob W. Frank. National Park Courtesy of Yellowstone in 1995 and said it is important that humans allow Yellowstone to refresh and heal itself from intervention over the years. “I believe that Yellowstone is a sacred place,” he said. “I believe that Yellowstone has a pulse.”