FALL NUMBER 2016 36 Vintage Maps and Guides for the Yellowstone Trail By Dave Habura, YTA Board Member and Northwest Correspondent, photos by author Over the years I have collected several hundred maps and travel guides, and have looked to see where our Trail is cited by name in a guide or on a map. The original Yellowstone Trail Association did not publish a guide showing the Trail in detail. In fact when we try today to determine the exact route of the Trail in some parts of the country, the experts have to rely on a variety of resources from a hundred years ago. I am not an expert! But over the years I have collected a variety of resources that I enjoy using. I want to share some of them here and give a very short elaboration on where you might find many like them. Let’s start with Rand McNally Auto Trail maps, or perhaps Clason’s Maps. Both identify the route of the Trail by name, either on the map, or by number and trail blaze. Rand McNally also attempted to show the road surface with little hash marks on one side or both sides of a road. Both are available on sites like eBay, and both are in single sheets and atlases. You will quickly discover that small scale maps like Rand McNally and Clason’s are Clason’s Map Co. Example great as a starting point, but they don’t give Rand McNally Map Example you much detail. For detail you will want to turn to publications that provided turn by turn descriptions or more detailed strip maps. The best source for turn by turn descriptions is the Automobile Blue Book (ABB). They covered the entire country in several volumes. Scarboroughs, Mixers, and Kings also provided excellent turn by turn descriptions, mostly in the eastern half of the country. The ABBs were updated and published annually and in most cases routes were based on actually traveling the roads. In fact, towns often created work parties to fix up the road before the ABB folks came through. The descriptions can often be applied using modern digital maps such as Google Maps and Earth. The short excerpt on the right is from a 1919 volume. (Continued) 1919 Automobile Blue Book Example 1 You should be cautioned that roads change, and they change a lot in 100 years! Names change, roads are rerouted, turns are straightened, etc. That is especially true in built up areas. None the less, often times you can discover the old Trail route on the ground. Finding a site or mileage control point (building, hotel, school house, depot, etc.) described 100 years ago can be rewarding. It is a bit like a treasure hunt. I have had several wonderful encounters with building owners when I show them that their site was a control point or recommended stop 100 years ago. I have spent 40 years accumulating perhaps 75 Automobile Blue Books, but you can get access now to many on Google Books and Archive.org for free. Another source is the strip map. TIB (Touring Information Bureau) Guides provide strip maps which may be matched against the Automobile Blue Books from the same era, so you have both turn by turn directions and a detailed strip map from the same period. I am both delighted and disappointed with the TIB maps. I am delighted because they are the only strip map source available in many cases, and disappointed because they were not regularly updated, and perhaps less accurate than I wish. But they are forgiven, considering the task they faced. Remember that road map makers like TIB and the auto clubs compiled their maps by driving the roads with notebook, compass, and odometer. No aerial or satellite images in those days!!! The example (right)is early (1916) and definitely shows how the old road followed section lines. In my state of Washington auto clubs also published detailed strip maps. Can you spot the error in the Yellowstone Trail blaze on this strip map? Tourist Information Bureau Example Often the best maps are the USGS topographical maps. The USGS now provides access to many on their site. Just search on USGS Historical maps. Combined with the sources noted above, you can often match roads quite readily. And as a huge bonus, the USGS historical maps are displayed overlaid on a modern map, so you can easily compare the two and locate sites Automobile Club Of Western Washington Example readily. And if you are interested, you can download the USGS map and overlay it on Google Earth. Finally, Historic Map Works, a commercial site, offers a wide range of county and local maps that can be invaluable. Also, years ago I posted some materials on the web at historicalroadmaps.com, but like many of my projects, I got excited about something else and it has languished for ten years. None the less, you may find a map there not available elsewhere. My large collection took half a lifetime to accumulate, but you can get much of it now on the web as I have noted above. Happy hunting!! 2 2016 Marks the Centennial of Autos in Yellowstone Park By Alice A. Ridge, Arrow Editor Emerita, Arrow file photos Most readers know that August 1, 1915 was the date that autos were finally admitted into Yellowstone National Park. But the tourist season was almost over for that year, so 1916 became the first full season for autos in the park. Up until that time, if one drove to the park, your prized automobile had to wait outside and the happy tourists were shuttled about by stagecoach. If they arrived by train, the stagecoaches were there at the station to carry tourists to their hotel in the park or to the famous Wylie Campground’s walled tents. The battle to allow autos into this sixth and last national park to do so was quite long and arduous. The army was still in charge of the park and felt that making the roads ready for autos as well as stage coaches was a Herculean and expensive task. There were no gas stations or repair garages, and safety could not be guaranteed. Transportation and hotel concessionaires were, understandably, strongly Yellowstone Nat’l Park Welcome Arch - YNP Photo opposed to autos. What would they do with their 1400-1600 horses who gave the park a Wild West feel? However, Wylie Permanent Camping Company, providers of wood-framed tents for the wealthy as a back-to-nature experience, saw the potential of autoist “sagebrushers” and pushed for their entry. Citizens of Cody pushed for their eastern entrance, AAA famous trailblazer A.L. Westgard shook his fist at the Roosevelt Arch annually, the governor of Colorado, through President Taft, could not budge Secretary of War Robert Oliver. It was the enormous amount of public pressure from the citizenry and also from auto clubs of every stripe, including a mighty push from the Yellowstone Trail Association, that finally made Oliver give up in April 1915. He declared August 1 as the date to allow time for roads to dry. He also set a high entrance fee of $7.50 per car. In today’s dollars that would be at least $100. Autos and horses sharing the same routes on narrow, steep, unimproved roads was a recipe for problems, so strict rules were laid down. Autos had to stay 150 yards from horses; autos had to adhere to strict time schedules (checked by guards) to avoid horses on their route; if autos met horses, the horses got the inside lanes, etc., etc. By the next year, 1917, most of the cumbersome rules were dropped and the famous yellow busses appeared. The Yellowstone Trail Association had issued a medallion with a picture of the Roosevelt Arch with a small car under it on the obverse side with the words “We Want In.” We assume that they were sent to Association members to arouse them to write letters about the topic. So, if you encounter heavy park traffic today, ponder the problems of 100 years ago. Maybe the Army had a point in prohibiting autos. Medallion photos by Mark Mowbray 3 Many Yellowstones - Part 1 of 3 By YTA Member Malcolm “Mac” Nelson, Brocton NY Most of our YT articles are about the main Yellowstone Trail; but how wrong it would be to ignore Yellowstone, the world’s first and greatest national park. What follows is one traveler’s appreciation of the crown jewel of our Trail. So what is the real Yellowstone? Kipling wrote: “There are nine and ninety ways, Of inventing tribal lays [poems], And every single one of them is right.” There are maybe nine-and-ninety Yellowstones, too. I will deal with those I know and love. Photo by Mark Mowbray Yellowstone’s Volcanic Geology No, don’t skip this. It’s important and interesting and I will keep it brief. Yellowstone is what it is for one big reason. There is a geologic hot spot, a magma core, a mass of molten rock only about a thousand feet below the earth’s surface, closer than anywhere else on earth. “Hot” means maybe 2000 degrees Fahrenheit. Big volcanic explosions are rare. There have been three in the past two million years. Don’t wish for another. Little eruptions and steam emissions occur all the time. Half of the geysers in the world are here. Fire and molten rock have made the Yellowstone we know. (“Geyser” is an Icelandic word, which tells you where most of the rest are.) Geysers erupt because of constricted passages under the earth, which produce superheated steam.