Does a beloved institution need its own myths to survive? Can conservationists avoid turning their heroes into legends? Should they try? Yellowstone National Park, a global icon of conservation and natural beauty, was born at the most improbable of times: the American Gilded Age, when altruism seemed extinct and society’s vision seemed focused on only greed and growth. Perhaps that is why the park’s “creation myth” portrayed a few saintlike pioneer conservationists laboring to set aside this unique wilderness against all odds. In fact, the establishment of Yellowstone was the result of complex social, scientific, economic, and aesthetic forces. Its creators were not saints but mortal humans with the full range of ideals and impulses known to the species. Authors Paul Schullery and Lee Whittlesey, both longtime students of Yellowstone’s complex history, present the first full account of how the fairy tale origins of the park found universal public acceptance and the long, painful process by which the myth was reconsidered and replaced with a more realistic and ultimately more satisfying story. In this evocative exploration of Yellowstone’s creation myth, the authors trace the evolution of the legend, its rise to incontrovertible truth, and its revelation as a mysterious and troubling episode that remains part folklore, part wish, and part history. This study demonstrates the passions stirred by any challenge to cherished national memories, just as it honors the ideals and dreams represented by our national myths.

Visitors to Yellowstone National Park are drawn to the spectacular scenery, unique thermal features, and the large numbers of wild animals easily observed in their natural habitat. The thoughtful visitor to the park cannot help but be captivated by the unparalleled breadth of scientific knowledge needed to understand the intricate interrelationships that make up the yellowstone landscape. Knowing Yellowstone explores how scientists discover what they know about America's first national park and the surrounding lands. The chapter authors are scientists who represent the best of their fields of study. The science they describe is leading the way to our understanding of complex ecosystems worldwide.

Learn about Yellowstone National Park's history and varied attractions, including Old Faithful, Lower Geyser Basin, and Tower Fall, as well as its resident wildlife.

In the winter of 1996-97, state and federal authorities shot or shipped to slaughter more than 1,100 Yellowstone National Park bison. Since that time, thousands more have been killed or hazed back into the park, as wildlife managers struggle to accommodate an animal that does not recognize man-made borders. Tensions over the hunting and preservation of the bison, an animal sacred to many Native Americans and an icon of the American West, are at least as old as the nation's first national park. Established in 1872, in part "to protect against the wanton destruction of the fish and game," Yellowstone has from the first been dedicated to preserving wildlife along with the park’s other natural wonders. The Smithsonian Institution, itself founded in 1848, viewed the park’s resources as critical to its own mission, looking to Yellowstone for specimens to augment its natural history collections, and later to stock the National Zoo. How this relationship developed around the conservation and display of American wildlife, with these two distinct organizations coming to mirror one another, is the little-known story Diane Smith tells in Yellowstone and the Smithsonian. Even before its founding as a national park, and well before the creation of the National Park Service in 1916, the Yellowstone region served as a source of specimens for scientists centered in Washington, D.C. Tracing the Yellowstone-Washington reciprocity to the earliest government-sponsored exploration of the region, Smith provides background and context for many of the practices, such as animal transfers and captive breeding, pursued a century later by a new generation of conservation biologists. She shows how Yellowstone, through its relationship with the Smithsonian, the National Museum, and ultimately the National Zoo, helped elevate the iconic nature of representative wildlife of the American West, particularly bison. Her book helps all of us, not least of all historians and biologists, to better understand the wildlife management and conservation policies that followed.