Yellowstone National Park: Travel through Time Exhibit

Due to its proximity to the Great Basin, Great Plains, and Rocky Mountains, Yellowstone was an important crossroads in Native American travel and trade. Many groups passed through Yellowstone each year to access resources, conduct ceremonies, and follow animal migrations. 

Tall tales about Yellowstone’s natural features proved intriguing to surveyors who mapped the area in the nineteenth century.

Construction of the Grand Loop allowed wagons, stagecoaches, and later automobiles to travel between Yellowstone’s scenic areas.

From the mid-twentieth century to today, Yellowstone National Park has improved its roads to protect visitors and the landscape.

Yellowstone National Park became the first national park in 1872. It was managed by a U.S. Cavalry regiment from 1886 to 1918.

Early tourists arrived at the park by train, took sightseeing tours by stagecoach or wagon, and lodged at campsites or luxury hotels.

As private automobiles rose in popularity through the 1910s, national parks across the country began allowing cars onto roads that were previously limited to horse-drawn vehicles. In 1916, a new fleet of vehicles entered Yellowstone for National Park Service purposes.

From the early days of U.S. Cavalry management of the park during the Army Era (1886 – 1918), skis and snowshoes have proven invaluable to traverse Yellowstone’s difficult terrain in the winter, as well as monitor for illegal activity. 

From controlling wildfires, to repairing roads, to conducting Search and Rescue operations, park vehicles get the job done.

Yellowstone National Park’s iconic yellow buses have toured visitors since 1917.

Mounting public pressure during the early 1900s culminated in the opening of the park to automobile traffic in the summer of 1915. Early driving in the park proved chaotic. Yellowstone’s dirt roads were functional enough for slow moving wagons, but wreaked havoc on early cars.

In 1949, the NPS began allowing motorized oversnow vehicles inside park boundaries.  Some of the first oversnow vehicles in the park were snowplanes, predecessors to snowmobiles.