Transcripts For CSPAN3 Yellowstone National Park Collection

Water color of the canyon of the yellowstone. Heres one of mammoth hot springs. Then we have we have jacksons photograph of the lower falls. This is the 1872 print of his one of his pictures, his albumin pictures on glass plates. You should keep in mind that they had a glass plate. They couldnt enlarge it. The plate was as large as the picture. They took the picture, they had to coat it and then expose it and then fix it and then keep track of this glass plate. They were on mules and horses. The very essence is the miracle we have any of them. We have to understand that lot of the park, it was driven by how could i make money. We understand we know for a fact that part of it was that railroads were making their move west, and in order to fund and to make a business out of it, they had to have places they wanted to go. And so the Northern Pacific railroad, which was going to be on through montana which would have been through what is now bozeman, livingston and on out to the pacific coast, they wanted to advertise and capitalize on the yellowstone park. So it was to their best interest to make it as alluring as possible. And so they began to fund either blatantly or behind the scenes these hotels that were being built. They were funding these different corporations who were building these things to entice the public to have somewhere to go and stay while they traveled through the park. Well, along this time, there was a man named f. J. Hanes working for the railroad as their photographer and he began to see the ability of the park, its scenic value both as scenery and as a business. And in 83, he wrote to the department of the interior and had himself made the official park photographer. And he started to coming in each summer to take photographs of the park and then sell them as part of his business. But in 87, f. J. Hanes was one of the first people to go into the park in the wintertime. And he took 42 glass plate pictures. But the photographs that he brought out were amazing. These were this is a picture of the group as it was going by obsidion cliffs. Heres a picture of the lower geyser basin, the winter of 1887. And whats interesting is that this shows this is the upper geyser basin, this shows people on skis moving through the snow. One of the best pictures i like is here, this is the lower falls. If you look real close, you can see the ice dome that builds in front of the falls as the spray begins to freeze. Along with hanes as he was given the photographic concession, he made a guide book and he sold his first guide book, came out in 1896. This is his 1896 guide look. We can see where he used his photograp photographs, lot of written words and different images that hed shown. He had a map that was in the back here and it had some advertisement in the back which was the way that they did things. They had the advertisement in the back of books. He had an 1896 guide book. This is 97, this is 1907, 1916, 1924. This is 1935. This is 1936. You can see where they made a different they made a change in the cover. And this was their last, 1966. Mow, now, as you look through this one, you can see how the maps changed, there was more there was more maps. There was more concise pictures. He had flowers, he had birds. It was a complete guidebook. These were meant to be kept. We had a complete set from 1896 to 1966. The company was sold by his daughterinlaw isabella in 1969. Along with the guidebooks that hanes was putting out, the park was also used by the different railroad companies. There was the Northern Pacific, there was the Union Pacific, there was the burlington northern. These railroads came up to the edges of the park at different times. The first one was the Northern Pacific. And they started using the images of the park to advertise coming on their railroad to come to the park, be picked up by coaches and taken to the hotels. And then from the hotels, youd take a stagecoach ride around the park. These were five to sevenday tours. And they cost a whopping 55. The first ones that came out were these. This was one of the earlier ones. This is 1913. The ones that were really early were very generic. They didnt have a lot of photographic or visual appeal. It was just a brochure that said their timetables. This is the northern entrance. This shows how the Northern Pacific would view. It would give you some idea of what you were going to see. Theres fishing cone. Theres theres isa lake up at the divide going towards west thumb. And they would give you what their itinerary was, what you would see in the park. You can tell that they had very artistic renderings. Heres old faithful, as you can almost see this very its brush strokes are very apparent. Now, this is the burlington route, also the Northern Pacific. And it had standard tours. It was a usual how to see the park, what you were going to see, the lodges and some of the ideas of to sort of perk your interest into want to do this. And this is one here, even for children. This is a Union Pacific Childrens Book of yellowstone bears. They took this theme, they had coloring books, they were looking at all parts of the family. One of the interesting things about these travel posters is that we see during this same time, it was the rise of the middle class. It was the rise of disposable income. It was the rise of vacations. In 1910, president taft puts an article in the New York Times that says everybody should have two to three weeks off to regenerate themselves for the coming fall and winter. And so we see the idea of some of this stuff has broader meaning, sociological why this is going on. Why we do this is it helps us to understand who we are. President Woodrow Wilson signed legislation creating the National Park service on august 25th, 1916. To mark the centennial, American History tv is featuring National Park Service Sites throughout the country. We continue now with another stop on the cspan cities tour. Padre Island National seashore is 70 miles of a Barrier Island with both beach, bay, coastal prairie. Were located just about 25 minutes from the city of Corpus Christi texas. This island traditionally started out being used by different native american tribes seasonally. They would come here during nice weather. There was a bounty of fish in the area. There was lots of sea plants they would use on the island, and then they would leave when the weather was bad in the winter. What happened next, when the spanish area was happening, there was a man born up the Rio Grande River who became actually a priest. They called him padre bali and the island is named after him. What happened is he got a spanish land grant and he got padre island, he split it with his nephew. What they started doing over 200 years ago was cattle ranching. Thats how it started out with his name. And it actually did very well for him and his nephew. Once he passed away, the land that was his was split between his other relatives. So his nephew and other relatives would have most of the island to ranch on and eventually they would sell it bit by bit by bit. And over time, the island went through many, many hands. It stayed mostly a cattle ranch. Here i am in a huge prairie. You wouldnt know it by looking at it, but over the dunes there is the gulf of mexico. Weve got all these great grasslands here. Eventually the land ended up mostly in the hands of a man named patrick dunn. This was in the 1870s. The story of patrick dunn is a Pretty Amazing one. He was born in Corpus Christi in 1858. In his teenage