Storytelling in Yellowstone : horse and buggy tour guides

Long before snowmobiles, paved roads, and SUVs were introduced into Yellowstone National Park, a myriad of companies offered buggy and stage rides through the Park, with their drivers telling stories to their passengers. Some of these stories had no basis in fact, especially those attributed to "Indian legends," but others came from the early trappers and fur traders and were as informational as they were entertaining. Lee Whittlesey, Yellowstone National Park historian, has devoted years of research to these pre-1920 stories told by the Park's "tour guides," or interpreters. He includes the campfire stories of the traders and trappers, Yellowstone as it was portrayed in early photos and movies, the first group of Yellowstone guidebooks written, and the "fool tenderfoot questions" posed by the late nineteenth-century tourists. Whittlesey devotes chapters to the first two National Park interpreters, Philetus "Windy" Norris and G. L. Henderson. Each had his own style of delivery and each awed his respective tour groups. And, finally, there are the stagecoach drivers who chauffeured the public over Yellowstone's dirt roads and engaged their passengers with tales of the great Geyserland. Today's National Park Service has taken over the duties of the "horse and buggy tour guides" but private and concessioner tour guides also share Yellowstone National Park's many stories. All author proceeds from this book are being donated to the National Park Service. Introduction: National park interpretation and its roots in early Yellowstone National Park Native Americans : the earliest Yellowstone storytellers Munchausen storytellers : trappers around the campfire "Everyone can understand a picture!" : early Yellowstone photographs tell the stories with images Lectures and lecturers : Langford and later men marry sound and pictures Wonders enumerated and peculiarities noted : early Yellowstone guidebooks and writers "Well dressed, lettered, and affixed" : signs and guideboards in early Yellowstone "A pronounced weakness for geysers" : early geyser "gazers" in Yellowstone Philetus "Windy" Norris : the "first" national park interpreter G.L. Henderson : the other "first" national park interpreter "All them fool tenderfoot questions!" : stories on the Yellowstone grand tour "To point out the way" : early tour guides in Yellowstone Conclusion Appendix 1: "Do you recall your walk in Geyser Basin?" Appendix 2: Livingston enterprise biography of "Geyser" Bill Appendix 3: Petition to the secretary of the Interior to retain P.W. Norris as park superintendent. Park concessionaires in the 1870s and 1880s helped make Yellowstone National Park the premier tourist destination in the American West. They developed a network of storytelling tour guides and talking stagecoach drivers who conveyed information to travelers. This embryonic promotional system, consisting of hotels, transportation companies, photographers, and tour guides, gave rise to commercial lecturers and guidebook writers who traveled widely to promote the park's wonders. Combined, these various promoters created the base for formal park interpretation, officially instituted in 1920