1882 (1884) Poole Brothers Map of Yellowstone National Park, Northern Pacific Railroad

This impressive, early promotional chromolithographic map of Yellowstone National Park was prepared by Carl J. Hals and Arvid Rydstrom in 1882 and was printed by Poole Brothers for the Northern Pacific Railroad. It coincided with the Northern Pacific's opening of a rail link to the park, the first easy means for the masses to access it, which helped boost the park's image in the popular imagination and spur Western American nature tourism.

A Closer Look

Coverage includes the entirety of Yellowstone National Park. Color contrast is used to represent changes in elevation, with mountain peaks labeled and their elevations noted. The Yellowstone River, Yellowstone Lake, Shoshone Lake, and other waterways are traced, as are the handful of wagon roads and trails running through the park and from it to the rail station at Cinnabar. Geysers, hot springs, and the small number of existing accommodations are also indicated. An inset map at the bottom-left displays the wider region, highlighting the connection of the Yellowstone branch line to the mainline of the Northern Pacific at Livingston, Montana.

The verso contains a fascinating reimagining of Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, in which an adult Alice writes a letter to 'Edith,' probably a reference to the youngest child of Carroll's friend Henry Liddell, whose middle child Alice provided the name for the novel's protagonist. In the letter, Alice tells her 'cousin' about the wonders of Yellowstone, 'every bit as strange and bewildering' as her dream described in Carroll's book. This imagined letter was a clever and creative way for the Northern Pacific to promote the park and the railway simultaneously. Interspersed are illustrations of Alice enjoying the park, natural scenes, and other images evoking adventure and excitement. A final panel lays out a series of tour options, originating in St. Paul and offering various itineraries of the park's main attractions.

Yellowstone National Park

Yellowstone National Park, established by the U.S. Congress and signed into law by President Ulysses S. Grant on March 1, 1872, is America's first and most famous national park. The park occupies the northwestern corner of Wyoming and parts of Montana and Idaho. Yellowstone is considered to be the world's first national park. Today, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, the park is known for its incredible geothermal features, the most famous of which is the Old Faithful Geyser. Yellowstone's iconic geothermal activity is caused by a dormant supervolcano, the largest in North America, lying directly under the park. Yellowstone Lake, one of the largest high-elevation lakes on the continent, occupies the caldera's center. Yellowstone is also renowned for its wildlife, home to wolves, grizzly bears, elk, black bears, and America's largest wild bison herd. Yellowstone is one of the most popular National Parks in the United States, and millions visit Yellowstone annually to experience its mud pots, geysers, wildlife, and striking scenery.

The Northern Pacific Railway and Yellowstone

Although the establishment of Yellowstone National Park was a landmark event in American history, few people had the means, methods, and inclination to visit the park when it opened. Merely getting to the outskirts of Yellowstone would have been an extremely arduous journey, let alone roaming around within the park. In the park's first decade, official visitors numbered in the low hundreds. In contrast, unofficial 'visitors' included Native Americans who historically lived within or traveled across the park's boundaries, squatters, vandals, and poachers dedicated to massacring scores of buffalo, elk, and other animals. Nathaniel P. Langford (1832 - 1911) and other early park superintendents spent most of their time contending with these issues. However, in the early 1880s, the situation changed completely thanks to the Northern Pacific Railroad.

The opening of the park was a godsend for the railroad. Although planned as a transcontinental route and therefore receiving considerable assistance from the federal government, namely generous land grants, the railroad's progress through the northern Plains and Pacific Northwest proceeded at a snail's pace, taking nearly twenty years from being chartered by Congress to completing the line between Duluth, Minnesota and Tacoma, Washington. Before the line was even completed in 1883, plans were made to create a branch line to the northern edge of Yellowstone from Livingston, Montana. This was completed in short order, terminating at Cinnabar, a town created by and for the railroad. This route made the prospect of reaching Yellowstone from distant points a matter of days, riding in relative comfort rather than weeks and months overland by stagecoach or wagon. The railroad launched or financed a range of ventures to coincide with this newly convenient method of accessing the park, including stagecoaches to carry passengers to and through the park, lodges for them to rest, and hotels for them to sleep (several of which still stand). This was a boon to the Northern Pacific for several decades, but in the early 20th century, competing railroads and then automobiles provided alternative means for accessing Yellowstone, eroding the Northern Pacific's monopoly.

Chromolithography

Chromolithography is a color lithographic technique developed in the mid-19th century. The process involved using multiple lithographic stones, one for each color, to yield a rich composite effect. Oftentimes, the process would start with a black basecoat upon which subsequent colors were layered. Some chromolithographs used 30 or more separate lithographic stones to achieve the desired effect. Chromolithograph color could also be effectively blended for even more dramatic results. The process became extremely popular in the late 19th and early 20th centuries when it emerged as the dominant method of color printing. The vivid color chromolithography produced made it exceptionally effective for advertising and propaganda imagery.

Publication History and Census

This map was originally surveyed by Carl J. Hals and Arvid Rydstrom in 1882 and was published thereafter by the Chicago printers Poole Brothers, among their earliest outputs, in conjunction with Charles Fee, an agent of the Northern Pacific Railroad (also known as the Northern Pacific Railway). Though the survey was undertaken in 1882, most catalog listings date the map to 1884 or 1885, based on the date of the imagined letter on the verso (September 2, 1884). The map is also often dated to 1886 since it was included in George Wingate's book published that year titled Through the Yellowstone Park on Horseback (New York: O. Judd Co.). There are at least three printings of this map (one being the printing included in Wingate's book) with differing verso content. Moreover, Poole Brothers and Fee printed maps and views with similar titles into the late 1890s. Therefore, institutional cataloging of the map is inconsistent and confounding.