User talk:Mike Cline/Articles Under Contemplation/Historiography of Yellowstone National Park

The Historiography of Yellowstone National Park is the manner by which  the research, writings, and themes of historians, authors, scientists and photographers/artists have studied and documented the history of Yellowstone National Park. The history of Yellowstone is multi-pronged. Its discovery, the "Creation Myth", and its management have all been the subject of the historian's pen.

Background
On March 2, 1872 when President Ulysses S. Grant signed the Act of dedication creating the park, that Act contained the following phrase: dedicated and set apart as a public park or pleasuring ground for the benefit and enjoyment of the people. Today's the Roosevelt Arch which greets visitors to the northern entrance to the park in Gardiner, Montana is inscribed For the benefit and enjoyment of the people. Since the early days of the park, managers first from the U.S. Department of the Interior, the U.S. Army and finally the National Park Service have struggled with balancing all the geologic, environmental, wildlife and recreational needs of the park with that very invocation: For the benefit and enjoyment of the people. Those struggles have been well documented by park historians, photographers and authors, many times in very critical ways. Although created in 1872, the question of when Yellowstone was discovered has always been subject to historical debate.

The first histories
Throughout the early 19th century trappers, explorers and travelers told tales of the mysterious regions of the Upper Yellowstone. Unfortunately, there was great disbelief about the undocumented stories of waterfalls, geysers and other thermal features. It wasn't until the 1860s that educated men in the polictical centers of Montana began seriously searching for the truth. The earliest histories of Yellowstone were based on the published diaries of the explorers who visited the region in 1869-1971 and of the expeditions into the park after its foundation. The most notable of these was by Nathaniel P. Langford, a member of the Washburn–Langford–Doane Expedition (1870) and first superintendent of the park. Written in 1905, The Discovery of Yellowstone Park, although retrospective, built on the diaries of expedition members and previously published accounts in Scribner's Monthly and the Overland Monthly.
 * Nathaniel Langford
 * Hayden diaries
 * Expedition reports

Hiram M. Chittenden
Hiram M. Chittenden's Yellowstone National Park-Historical and Descriptive (1895) was the first comprehensive historical coverage of the young national park. Chittenden was closely associated with the development of the park's early infrastructure, especially its road and bridge system as the park's Chief Engineer from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers between (1891-1892, 1899-1906). Chittenden is the first historian to try and tie the disparate and sparse evidence of visitation and use of the Yellowstone regions by Native Americans, trappers and explorers. The era of which Chittenden writes saw dramatic changes in the administration and landscape of the new park as well as external pressures, many successful to exploit the park for commercial gain. Undergoing a major revision after Chittenden's second tour as Chief Engineer, Yellowstone National Park-Historical and Descriptive (1915) is in part a chronicle of the park's pre-formation and early history and in part a tourist guide.

Of the many interpretations of the park's history that have evolved over time, The Campfire Story has evolved from truth to myth in the last century. The story which describes the birth of the National Park idea around a campfire at the confluence of the Firehole and Madison Rivers on September 19, 1870, the last night of the Washburn–Langford–Doane Expedition in the park can be attributed to Nathaniel P. Langford but Chittenden's Yellowstone National Park-Historical and Descriptive is considered by modern Yellowstone historians as the prototypical account of this event that influenced understanding and marketing by the National Park Service of the park's creation for most of the 20th century.

Aubrey L. Haines
(Park ranger, engineer and historian 1938-1980s(?) ) The first official and long time Yellowstone National Park historian, Aubrey Haines produced the first comphrehensive history of Yellowstone under National Park Service management with his two volume The Yellowstone Story: A history of our first national park (1977).

Paul Schullery
(Park writer and archivist, historian 1988-2008)

Lee H. Whittlesey
(current park archivist)

Critical histories

 * Bartlett, Richard (1985). Yellowstone: A Wilderness Besieged
 * Chase, Alton (1986). Playing God in Yellowstone-The Destruction of America's First National Park
 * Black, George (2012). Empire of Shadows-The Epic Story of Yellowstone

Photographic and artistic history

 * Thomas Moran
 * William Henry Jackson
 * Frank Jay Haynes and Jack Ellis Haynes

The role of the non-profits
(what roles has the Yellowstone Park Foundation and the Yellowstone Association played in documenting and interpreting the history of the park?)

The role of The Yellowstone Heritage & Research Center
The history of Yellowstone has been highly dependent on the artifacts of it development, management and growth. These are maintained by the Yellowstone Heritage and Research Center in Gardiner, Montana established in 2004. The center houses ~3,000 linear feet of historic records, 90,000 photographic prints and negatives, 20,000 books and manuscripts, and 300,000 natural science specimens and cultural objects.