Customer Reviews

Myth and History in the Creation of Yellowstone National Park

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The collaborative effort of Paul Schullery (Professor of History, Montana State University) and Lee Whittlesey (Park Historian, National Park Service, Yellowstone National Park), Myth And History In The Creation Of Yellowstone National Park presents the complex and fascinating history behind the creation of the Yellowstone National Park. This unprecedented establishment came to be during the American Gilded Age, a time when corporate greed ran rampant and political altruism seemed almost extinct. Myths about the inception of Yellowstone National Park have persevered and found an enduring public acceptance, but the true story of the individuals behind the park's creation is actually one of flawed human beings with their own competing motives, and not necessarily pure-hearted conservational philosophies. Myth And History In The Creation Of Yellowstone National Park is a work of impressive scholarship and very highly recommended for university and community library American History collections.

Schullery and Whittlesey have performed a great service for all lovers of Yellowstone Park and its history. This is excellent scholarship. It is not, however, the "first full account" of this story. Chris Magoc's Yellowstone: The Creation and Selling of an American Landscape, 1870-1903 (University of New Mexico Press and MOntana Historical Society, 1999), is equally fine and indeed goes further and deeper in its analysis of the cultural and historical significance of this chapter of the park's history.

In this book, two of Yellowstone's most popular historians review the story of the "national park idea." According to now-discredited myth, the idea came to members of the Hayden Expedition around a campfire near where the Gibbon and Firehole rivers flow together to form the Madison.

The book reviews the myth, the lack of evidence for it, and its gradual debunking. If you've read Aubrey Haines' histories, you already know much of this material. Schullery and Whittlesey go further and look at how the National Park Service presented the myth, and how it rejected it only with great reluctance. Haines' cautious criticism of the myth cost him his job, a story that Haines understandably did not tell. Schullery and Whittlesey also consulted Haines' notes, finding that he shrunk back from many other criticisms of the mythmakers that he had come to believe.

It's a short, well-written book that you could read in a single sitting. However, few people are such Yellowstone junkies that they really want to read about the creation and destruction of a single story of the park. If you're one of those people, you'll definitely want this book on your shelf. (Also, you'll probably give it 4-5 stars.) The general reader will find more information than she really wants, and too much scholarly attention to the veracity of documents, sources, and historical figures.