How Buffalo Bill and a Civil War General Saved Yellowstone National Park

"The park celebrates its 150th anniversary this month. But in the 1880s, its future was in peril."

"In 1883, the public was transfixed by Yellowstone National Park, and not in a good way. This 2-million-acre natural treasure — mostly in Wyoming but with some land in Montana and Idaho — was being despoiled by commercial interests through the slaughter of wild animals, unrestricted logging and vandalism of hot springs.

On Feb. 25, a letter published in the New York Sun heightened the sense of crisis. The author warned of “mammoth mistakes” at Yellowstone — which marks its 150th anniversary this month — and urged Congress to prevent the killing of the once-plentiful buffalo (specifically American bison), the last of which were now being hunted to extinction at the park. “Their slaughter has been criminally large and useless,” he wrote.

The letter was signed by William F. Cody, better known as Buffalo Bill. Ironically, he had earned that nickname 15 years earlier for killing 4,000 buffalo as a contract supplier of meat to the railroads as they laid down track across the West. Of the estimated 30 million bison that roamed the Great Plains in in the 1850s, only a few thousand remained in isolated pockets in 1883."

Dave Kindy reports for the Washington Post March 6, 2022.

Source: Washington Post, 03/11/2022