Yellowstone

American History Hit

History Hit

America, History

4.5 • 1.3K Ratings

🗓️ 30 January 2023

⏱️ 40 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

For thousands of years, nomadic Native American peoples crossed the Yellowstone River basin, in awe of its stunning landscape and geothermal wonders. Very few colonial Americans had set sight on its mountains, geysers and hot springs before geologist Ferdinand Hayden and his party arrived in the summer of 1871.

Hayden's survey, the first of the region, contributed to Yellowstone becoming the first National Park in America. But while the Yellowstone Act of 1872 protected the area from development by private business, it dispossessed the Native Americans of their ancestral land.

Produced by Benjie Guy. Mixed by Anisha Deva. Senior Producer: Charlotte Long.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	It is July 21st, 1871. Geologist Ferdinand Vandiver Hayden and his survey team have reached the
0:09.6	Yellowstone River Basin. They are following the Gardner River, a tributary of the Yellowstone,
0:14.4	when Hayden reaches the top of a hill and looks down on an otherworldly site.
0:20.0	Steam rises mystically from pools of water embedded on terraced steps of white, brown, and cream-colored limestone rock.
0:28.0	A scene Hayden had heard about, described by trappers and the few colonial travelers to the region in years previous, but barely believed.
0:36.0	This huge impressive geothermal feature will become known as Mammoth Hot Springs.
0:41.0	It is by no means the last natural phenomenon that Hayden and his party will encounter,
0:46.0	erupting geysers, bubbling mudspots, and hissing steam vents abound in a landscape of stunning vistas as they compile the first survey of what will become
0:56.2	Yellowstone National Park.
0:58.7	While we may think today that the preservation of such a place is a given,
1:02.2	competing interests in a reconstruction era America meant this would not necessarily be so. Greetings all. I'm Don Wildman and welcome to another episode of American History Hit. Thanks for listening.
1:24.0	One of the great glories of American life and culture is our national park system,
1:29.0	a vast collection of some of the most breathtakingly beautiful lands known in creation, preserved in
1:35.7	perpetuity by the US government for the enjoyment and pleasure of its people.
1:40.6	In a public sense, every American possesses some small piece of these parks, and yet so few of us really have any notion of the mammoth task it was to create them, the epic complications behind the effort.
1:55.0	And certainly this is true of the very first one, Yellowstone National Park, enacted by Congress
1:59.6	in March 1872 and signed into existence by President Ulysses S Grant.
2:05.0	It was the first time a national government ever took on such a monumental challenge
2:10.0	and then coped with the consequences.
2:12.0	It was unprecedented, a federal effort to preserve land
2:15.4	when land in this country was a major currency.
2:18.2	It was all driven by a rather small circle of men.
	...

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