Hardened mountain men and explorers like Jim Bridger, and John Colter, a member of the Lewis and Clark expedition, were dismissed as crackpots and whack jobs during the early 1800s when they emerged from the northern Rocky Mountain wilds spinning fanciful tales of gushing geysers, misty psychedelic hot springs, an earth that rumbled like thunder and belched scalding water, and pots of boiling mud bubbling like oatmeal. It wasn’t until the 1870s that the director of the U.S. Geological and Geographical Survey of the Territories, Dr. Ferdinand Hayden, along with the renowned artist Thomas Moran, the famous landscape photographer William Henry Jackson, and others, embarked on an official expedition to verify the fanciful accounts of this otherworldly planet. After they returned with their findings, Congress got the point and designated 2.1 million acres of this wilderness wonderland as Yellowstone National Park on March 1, 1872. Since then, outdoor recreation in America has never been the same.

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