Yellowstone National Park established

Background. The first written report of unusual features at Yellowstone appeared in September 1805 as second-hand accounts in a letter to James Wilkinson. In winter 1807-1808, John Colter, formerly of the Lewis and Clark Expedition, passed through what later became the park's northeast corner near Tower Fall. He described an active geothermal site outside the present-day park as "hell" for its sulphuric smell; Washington Irving later dubbed it "Colter's Hell," a name that stuck. By 1863 the region's basic geography was understood but no detailed written account existed. The national park concept was first proposed in 1833 by painter George Catlin, joined by Washington Irving in 1837 and Henry David Thoreau in 1858; by the 1860s, after American Indian Wars and genocides, public opinion favored confining Native Americans to reservations, and the national park was reimagined as pristine wilderness free of human activity.

Expeditions. The Cook-Folsom-Peterson Expedition of 1869 provided the first detailed reports. Based on these, the Washburn-Langford-Doane Expedition of 1870 named Old Faithful. The government-sponsored Hayden Geological Survey of 1871 produced a comprehensive report with photographs and paintings, solidifying the case for preservation.

Establishment. Yellowstone was the first national park in the United States and is widely understood to be the first in the world. Nathaniel P. Langford was appointed as Yellowstone's first superintendent in 1872, but Congress denied him salary, funding, or staff. Yellowstone Park faced opposition from local mining and logging interests. Langford was unable to make any improvements to the park, but he understood the importance of defending Yellowstone from pollution and poaching and saw its value as a natural attraction, correctly predicting in his first annual report that it would eventually become internationally famous.