Six-horse tally-ho leaving mountain walled Gardiner for trip through Yellowstone Park, U.S.A.

Publication

Six-horse tally-ho leaving mountain walled Gardiner for trip through Yellowstone Park, U.S.A.

Description

You are looking nearly northwest across the railroad to the Gallatin Mountains. That train has come from the junction at Livingstone, Montana, 54 miles away, bringing these tourists from through trains on the Northern Pacific R. R. Thousands come in this way every season (June-August). In the twenty-odd years since railroads made the place accessible fully 200,000 visitors have been attracted to the place. The trees you see over beyond the pond and on the lower mountain slopes are mostly scrub-pines. There is a scanty growth of buffalo grass on the hills, but on the whole, vegetation is not luxuriant; the beauty of the ranges consists in their magnificent, strong contours and the colors they take in the distance according to the lighting and the weather. This Gallatin range is considerably higher than you think at first sight, for the lower lands themselves constitute a high plateau built up by volcanic agencies. Even now you are 5,400 feet above sea-level. it is less than forty years since the Park was first thoroughly explored (1871), though a member of the expedition of Lewis and Clark, the famous pioneers of the Missouri and its branches, learned a few of the marvelous facts about it in 1805-6. An act of Congress in 1872 set off the region forever as a "public park or pleasure ground for the benefit and enjoyment of the people." (See H. M. Chittenden's "Yellowstone National Park," for detailed accounts of early explorations here.) From Notes of Travel, No.13, copyright, 1904, by Underwood & Underwood.