ABSTRACT
The catalyst for the world's first national park was an 1870 exploring party. They were a group of businessmen, local officials and journalists from Helena in Montana. They had come south to Yellowstone to follow up vague reports by fur-trappers of its natural wonders. Partly tourists, partly explorers, partly economic opportunists: nowadays they would be characterised as explorer travellers. Their leader was Henry Washburn, a Civil War general and lawyer who had recently been appointed Surveyor-General of Montana. Keeping a record of their adventures was Nathaniel P. Langford, a businessman and sometime government official. His account was published the next year in a new magazine called Scribner's Monthly. The output of such publications was booming in a growing United States. The railway brought visitors to the park boundary and within there were hotels, tented camps, coaches, horseback tours and tour guides. As Yellowstone grew in popularity, travel writers began to add it to their Western itineraries.
