Oh, this largest and one of our most beautiful vacation lands is Yellowstone National park. There it is. That white area in northwestern wyoming. It touches montana and idaho and doesnt touch your imagination a little. To think that the worlds greatest outdoor museum, all the flowers and forest and mountains are reserved for you. All established in 1872 by the United States congress, Yellowstone National park was the worlds first National Park, encompassing land from three states. Idaho, montana and wyoming. The park is an economic driver for towns that surround it. While in bozeman, montana, which sits about 75 miles north of the park, we spoke with former park historian Lee Whittlesey about his career and the impact the park has had on the region. Tell us about your first yellowstone experience. Oh, my gosh. My first yellowstone experience reaches way back. And like for so many americans, it was a vacation. I was four and my parents brought us my brother and me, to yellowstone from norman, oklahoma. Our hometown and they continued bringing us for many years and so we were always interested in not just yellowstone, but the whole american west. And so we fell into that trap of never going east. No matter what mother wanted to do, except just always going west, because mostly dad wanted to fish in yellowstone alone. So we fell in love with the region early and had relatives in in montana, which added to it very early experience. And when i was 16 and my brother 14, we vacation here and we saw the employees and one of them invited us to a dance and that sort of did it. We were too young for the dance, but we got in and saw all the fun they were having. And as soon as we both hit 18, we applied and got jobs with the concessionaire in yellowstone. And i should correct that the jobs were the concessionaires actually didnt come to a little bit later. Our father being a government employee, knew the route to get into the National Park service. So we didnt have to do the concession route till later. We went right to the National Park service and both of us were on the road crew in the garbage truck in yellowstone, very early. And did that for a couple of years. And. Decided, well, the work is not what i want to be doing. And i went to the concessionaire with an eye toward the parties. And here i am, 20 years old. Im interested in the social life, that kind of stuff. And i got hired as a bus tour guide and thought it was the greatest job id ever had. If only there had been a winter season, which then there was not. And so i left the park for five years and did other things, had a commercial broadcasting career for a good number of years, was a teacher for a while, was a travel agent for a while, and got called back to yellowstone one day with an old friend who picked up the phone and offered me a job training. His tour guide with the bus operation. And it was just a great lucky break. And that sort of put me on the track to knowing that i wanted to learn things about it and fortunately i had paid a lot of attention in history classes because of a lot of it centered around history and so first thing you know, i was the trainer for tour bus drivers and by that time theyd added a winter operation, which was snow coaching, and i was in heaven. It was, wow, i get to train these guys to do the tours and. So after that, i learned that there was a position known as park historian, and i aimed at that and it took 20 years to get there, but i eventually i did it. When did you begin writing about yellowstone . How many books have you written . Its 15. Published three. Coming books. When did i begin writing . That would be pretty early in the 70 years. And i just sort of stumbled into this wonderful project which involved the history of the yellowstone place names and i was amazed to see that no one had taken that project on. And as i got into, it became it became apparent why no one had taken that that project on, because there were there were 4000 place names, 2000 active and 2000 jobs. Elite. And it was just overwhelm me. And im glad i didnt know how many there were to begin with. So i worked on that that book for 15 years and it was published in 1988 by the Montana Historical society. It was my first book. What are some of the topics that that you cover in your different writings . Oh, my gosh. Topics that i cover. Im, i guess one that people do actually know about. Probably the only. One is all of the people who got killed. Generally carelessly or negligent. Only in yellowstone. Its a book called death in yellowstone, and it deals with a great number of cases of very sad deaths, include reaching way back into indian. The few indian battles that occurred in the park and then i had it divided into death by human causes and death by nature, Natural Causes. And the Natural Causes really, i think, are more interesting. A lot of National Parks have. Hidden dangers. You know, at the grand canyon, you can fall into the big hole. Yellowstone has that, too, in its canyon. A lot of parks you can drown or take a fall over a waterfall or over a another precipice. Yellowstone stone has all those, but it also has the strange deaths like being boiled in a hot spring, you know, or eaten by a grizzly bear or gored by a bison. All those things have killed people in yellowstone. Bozeman, actually, i guess, predates the established men of the park. So does the relationship between the park and cities like bozeman or even living . Sure. You bet. Yes. Bozeman predates yellowstone. Yellowstone being 1872. Bozeman, 1860 for bozeman was an Agricultural Community rather than so many of montanas communities, which were mining and near it to the west, sort of near it was Virginia City. So montanas history is all bound up in mining and those miners who jumped across from idaho. So in earlier, california, 1849, in the 1850s, jumped across into montana and those miners spread out looking for the gulch is as they call them. And so they looked in yellowstone, but they didnt really make a gold strike. And that was fortunate for yellowstone. It it probably saved the National Park. The fact that there wasnt a gold strike or we didnt have a gold strike there, instead of the National Park. So bozeman very early became an outfitting point for yellowstone, as did Virginia City. And i think thats the thats the key connection, is that those two towns as early as 1880 were in a kind of a competition. And Virginia City quickly lost that battle of being an outfitting point. They were just too far away. Bozeman. Only 75 miles away from the North Entrance, sort of won that battle. Yellowstone was already effectively the first state attraction. And for tourists in the interior of the american west, thats pretty significant. Thats a big deal. It and part of that impetus occurred because they were teaching the existence of yellowstone in schools in europe before, almost before they were doing it on the east coast in this country. And so by the time the railroad arrived at the North Entrance in 1883, yellowstone was world famous already. And everybody wanted to come and see it. Everybody wanted to be on that train coming here. So all of a sudden, in 1883, there were 5000 visitors, whereas before there had been 1000. You know, in 1881 and 82, about a thousand. And in the 1870s, about 500 a year is all. And those people all had to come by horseback, mule, you know, pack string because there were no roads yet. So if you came in the 1870s, you came on the Transcontinental Railroad to corinne, utah or ogden somewhere down in there where the mormons were just putting a few railroad things together to to hook the transcontinental up with Salt Lake City and then it was a 400 mile journey overland by wagon and or horse and mule back. And when you got to bozeman, you re outfitted all on horse and mule back. So it took a long time just to get to areas around yellowstone before your park tour even began. And the park tour was more than a week, the 1870s, because you were camping all the way and it was five and a quarter days around yellowstone. Hot, dusty and tiring at six miles an hour. So you had time to smell the flowers. You had time to really see things. You had time to ask lots of questions. You know, have all your hear all the stories not only from stagecoach drivers, but from other parking ployees, and then as now, every one was a tour guide. Every one was ready to tell you all about the marvelous things you were going to see beginning in the 1880s, yellowstone got a Stagecoach Company and interior in the park company. There were already coaching outfits to the west of the park, but in the park they got one. In 1883 and they put up this big hotel that we see behind us that was built in 1883. People were in this country tired of camping out. They had lived that way through the 18th and 19th centuries, and they wanted a little more comfort. Now, camping out would come back in the 1920s, become voguish again, but not initially. Initially, yellowstone was a system of big hotels, five big hotels serving young visitors from the 1880s clear up until the end of the stagecoach era. The last year was 1916 and you know, we had autos in many of the cities and towns of the nation pretty darn early. The earliest autos were chain driven in 1886. So the first one i can remember in by 1900. So many towns had, you know, automobiles, primitive ones right alongside their horses and buggies and wagons and not in yellowstone. This was a remained a primitive place that the army took care of, for another gosh, 25 years after most towns had autos. So from the 1890s, when autos were in most places until 1916, yellowstone was a horse and buggy place. Well, one question i often get, which i never can answer, is what is the future hold for yellowstone and bozeman are all bound up in that, and so is livingston. So are all the surrounding what we call the gateway towns and the regional states, which include montana, wyoming and idaho. All three. And theyre all part of that scene of in 2019, ever. One wants to live here. Were suddenly on everybodys list, top 20 or top worst top ten even worse. Top five places to live. And its understandable because you, Yellowstone National parks the centerpiece. An international airport, a university plus the the best, you know, hiking, hunting, fishing world class, skiing, all of those things that i started to say, money can buy or that free can give you. So what it has done, it has really, really ramp up the cost of housing. So theres kind of a sadness, i think, to yellowstones future. Is it gonna be a place just for rich people . What about this democracy that the National Park service has pushed so long since it was established and so arguably well, you know, through the years, making things afford affordable to the American Public can they still come here in years to come . How about visitation . You know, it was a whole lot easier when i started in yellowstone and there were 2. 2 million visitors. Now its. 4. 2 Million People just in yellowstone. So that is a lot of people. Whats the solution . Nobody knows the