Dr. Jesse Reimink: [00:00:00] Chris. Hi, man. Hi. Hi. Hi. Hi. Hi.

Chris Bolhuis: How you doing Dr. Reimink?

Dr. Jesse Reimink: I'm great, man. I'm great. Although I must say

Chris Bolhuis: I can’t call you Dr. Reimink right now. I just can't. I'm looking at you and I'm gonna call you Jesse, because like that's what you are…

Dr. Jesse Reimink: I don’t look like Dr. Reimink?

Chris Bolhuis: I, in our, in our friendship relationship, I don't call you Dr. Reimink. In fact, I told you once that I'm only gonna say it one time. I've said it now since we've been doing this. I've [00:00:30] said it about a thousand times and I’m tired of it.

Dr. Jesse Reimink: I know. when we started our podcast a while back, this was one of your main complaints is, ugh, I have to call you Dr. Reimink so much now with this podcast. It's driving me crazy. Oh man…

Chris Bolhuis: because every time I say it, I see you sit up a little bit straighter.

Dr. Jesse Reimink: Yeah. Yeah. I perk up and I think, oh, yeah. Chris is calling me Doctor. Yeah. I love it. Hey, um, this chapter, and this is kind of a nice segue into this chapter because we're talking about the human history here, and we have to hit this right Chris, like it is such an integral part of Yellowstone National Park.[00:01:00] We can't have a audio audiobook or a book otherwise, without talking about this a little bit. But this is not something we are experts in. Right. We know the Geology so, but this was a really fun exercise. Like I really enjoyed putting this together. It is so interesting. And there's a lot of stuff that I had either forgotten or didn't necessarily know.

Chris Bolhuis: A hundred percent. My wife, Jenny, this is her favorite chapter actually. I don't know if I should say that, but it is, it's like she just finds this part of Yellowstone to be so [00:01:30] intriguing and interesting and I, I have to agree. It is a necessary part of the story of Yellowstone.

Dr. Jesse Reimink: So Chris, why don't you give us an overview of where we're going, this chapter, brief overview, and then let's dive right in cuz it is super interesting.

Chris Bolhuis: So, we we're gonna go back 13,000 years. And we're gonna talk about these early cultures that moved through Yellowstone. We're gonna talk about some of the cultures that stayed, and we're gonna kind of move through from, you know, ancient history to more modern history. We'll talk about more of the modern Native Americans, then we're [00:02:00] gonna talk about the Europeans that eventually moved in and played a role in how Yellowstone got established as a national park.

Dr. Jesse Reimink: And before we do that real quick, Chris, let's just look at image number one. This is the map. We

showed this in an introduction, but get familiar with this thing. We're gonna use this a lot throughout the, throughout the, the book here. But I think we can move to image number two pretty quickly here. Which Chris, you said it, we don't have time to cover all of the interesting cultures that existed in this region or that used [00:02:30] Yellowstone National Park or migrated through here. This is an image that just shows the rough human history, the timeline of different cultures or complexes that existed in Yellowstone.

Chris Bolhuis: because we know that there are at least 27 Native American cultures that have passed through and visited Yellowstone. National Park in the last 13,000 years. And we know that this dates back that far. We're, we're gonna go back to the Clovis culture, and so we know that the Clovis culture dates back to at least [00:03:00] 11,000 years ago. My question to you, Jesse, is. Why not earlier? Why is there no record of human occupation or kind of this migration through the place prior to that time?

Dr. Jesse Reimink: It's a great question, Kurt. It's like, why 11,000 years? Why not earlier? Why not, you know, 15,000 or 20,000? And, the reason is glaciers, we go back that far and most of that part of North America and particularly Yellowstone, was covered by a continental [00:03:30] scale, glacier kilometers thick. And so what you can picture while you're visualizing this is Antarctica or Greenland, that big thick sheet of ice. Basically, early people did not wanna live on that. Could not live on it. Didn't live on it. Right. And and so basically what the Clovis culture sort of peoples did is they sort of followed the ice sheet up as it was retreating. So in the Yellowstone area, the ice sheet retreated around 13,000 years ago. And then, these people sort of moved into the region. It became kind of climate and habitable at that point.

Chris Bolhuis: [00:04:00] Jesse, I'm gonna throw some numbers on this a second because I think they're really, really important. There are over 1900 archeological sites, almost 2000 archeological sites found within Yellowstone National Park, and that's only really 3% of the park that's been surveyed for archeological sites in detail, which predictively then means that maybe there are over 60,000 potential archeological sites.

Dr. Jesse Reimink: It's amazing. I mean, that is just an [00:04:30] astonishing number, right Chris? And let's just list some of the things that you might see because as you're out there in Yellowstone National Park, you might see some of this stuff. You might come across it. You can have stone debris scattered around. We call this lithic scatter. Lithic meaning rock. So rock scatter. Think of, uh, somebody sitting around chipping out an arrowhead. And then the pieces that are left behind will be that lithic scatter. Circles of stones that held the walls of Teepee. We call those teepee rings, timber dwellings, things that look like basically a wood tepee. There's also stone and [00:05:00] wooden fences that were actually used to funnel game - so game drives. And importantly, there has been rock art found around the park, but not within it yet. And so, Chris, here's a question for you, because you've hiked in the park a lot. Have you ever seen some of this stuff? Have you ever come across any of these features I just listed.

Chris Bolhuis: Sadly. No, I have not. And, and I have an explanation for this. I think, um, one, this is not really my field of expertise at all, actually, I shouldn't say it's not really, it's [00:05:30] not. I tend to get laser focused when I'm in Yellowstone. I'm all about the rocks. But, you know, I'm gonna do better.

I really appreciate this part of the history of Yellowstone. It's not just the geologic history. The human history is fascinating to me. And so I'm just, I'm making a commitment to myself that I'm gonna do better. But the answer is no. I have not seen any archeological signs.

Dr. Jesse Reimink: Yeah, maybe you've walked past them, but you weren't noticing it. You had your eyes tuned into the rocks, or you're, you know, looking after the students that are on the trail behind you, et [00:06:00] cetera. I think this is a great place to point out that because of all of this, Past human history. There are 27 current tribes that have historic or historical connections to the lands and resources now found within Yellowstone. So if you're walking around in Yellowstone National Park, and we can't belabor this point enough, don't disturb any of this stuff. If you come across timber dwellings or lithic scatter, don't disturb it. Leave it there. Some of this, much of this would be sacred to current tribes or current peoples. [00:06:30] and it's really important historically to just leave it there.

Chris Bolhuis: That's right. And that pretty much goes for everything, Jesse. That goes for the rocks too, that, that you're gonna see in Yellowstone. Don't take anything - don't disturb anything. This place is just too special. So image number two gives a really brief summary of the 27 different cultures that have moved through Yellowstone National Park. But I wanna point to something specific because I think this is a very special [00:07:00] find in 2013…

Dr. Jesse Reimink: Let me interrupt real quick, Chris, before you get to that, and just say that image number two, the ones we're highlighting Clovis Complex and Cody Complex. Complex is a word used to mean kind of culture in this archeological terminology. And those are the two, the ones that are different colors. Those are the ones we're gonna highlight, we are gonna talk about of these 27. Sorry for interrupting. What's the find?

Chris Bolhuis: In 2013, archeologists discovered an obsidian arrowhead on the south arm of Yellowstone Lake. Go back up to image [00:07:30] number one a second, and you can see the south arm there.

This area is so remote, hardly anybody gets there because you need to either get there by boat, pack horse, or backpacking. Like day hiking would be a very… I don't know if that's even possible if you're day hiking. And what they found is a projectile, and it's called a Clovis Point, and it's a very distinctive thing on there. Image number three shows this Clovis Point. It has a [00:08:00] flake removed from the base that is the telltale sign of the Clovis culture. And again, image number three, you can see that very distinctive flake at the base of this point.

Dr. Jesse Reimink: Yeah, and the Clovis culture, this is named for Clovis, New Mexico, and these people were known to be pretty hardy, fur clad. I think the visual here, Chris, is I always visualize in my head a museum display. If you look at a museum display that has mastodons and wooly mammoths and sabertooth [00:08:30] tigers in it, the people that they put in that display, that's gonna be the Clovis culture. People. This is, fur clad skilled hunters. They kind of migrated and followed as we described before. They sort of followed the ice sheet as the ice sheet front was retreating. And so that's kind of what I always visualized here. And they inhabited these lower elevation planes of Wyoming and Montana at this time. And they kind of followed these milder climates with abundant wildlife.

Chris Bolhuis: And I wanna bring in one, I [00:09:00] think amazing statistic here, or fact to this thing is that archeologists, not here, but way further south, near New Mexico. They found a Clovis human Burial. They did a DNA analysis of this, and what they found is that the Clovis culture is related to some of the modern Native Americans and also populations from Central Asia and Siberia. And why that's so interesting to you and I is because that plays into Geology. Because [00:09:30] during the Ice Age, sea level is lower. This lends much support to the idea of the bering land bridge that would've existed during that time period and it really allowed for the settlement of the Americas.

Dr. Jesse Reimink: Yeah, because all the, uh, water from the ocean was soaked up by the ice sheets, by these massive continental scale glaciers. So Chris, I think talking about these Clovis points gives us a really great opportunity to talk about a rock, which we're never gonna turn down an opportunity to talk about a great rock. Right? And we're gonna talk [00:10:00] about obsidian here. And obsidian is… Uh, you've described it really well, Chris, as the MVP of rocks for early cultures, which is very, very accurate. So, uh, what I want you to do is tell us why it's the MVP. Why is obsidian so powerful or so interesting from an archeological perspective? And image number four in your stack is a piece of obsidian that you can look at and visualize, what obsidian looks like, at least one example of one flavor of what obsidian looks like. So Chris, why the M [00:10:30] V P status for obsidian?

Chris Bolhuis: Uh, because it comes to very sharp edges and points, very rough, jagged fractures is what it comes to. Look, a lot of rocks, most rocks break in a regular, predictable way, right? Obsidian does not. And so skilled people like the Clovis culture and the Folsom culture, they were able to chip away at the obsidian and shape it exactly how they wanted, yet coming to really, really sharp edges. So they were able to make [00:11:00] projectile points, tools for scraping hides and digging pits and things like this. So obsidian is one of the most used and, valued rocks of really all-time for humanity.

Dr. Jesse Reimink: Okay, so that brings us really nicely into, I want you to explain, first of all, how obsidian forms, what is obsidian and then why Yellowstone? Great rock, mvp rock. How does it form and why Yellowstone? That's where we're going now. How does it form Chris? This is a misconception. I [00:11:30] know that bothers you. I think so…

Chris Bolhuis: Is it the, it is a very common misconception. I'm so, I'm gonna start with that cuz you. addressed that first. The misconception is that obsidian forms when lava gets quenched in water, in other words from like instant cooling. And you get this glass instead of a normal rock. Right. That's the misconception. Actually, obsidian forms from very sticky lava that cooled rather normally. I mean, it was extrusive, it was cooling faster than something that [00:12:00] cooled deep inside the earth for sure. But the stickiness is what's important because it's so thick and gooey, it's taffy like, and this doesn't allow the ions to attach to other nearby ions and grow crystals in a normal kind of way that rocks do. And so, the key is it has to be really sticky, thick, gooey magma. And you know what? That's exactly what typifies Yellowstone. That's what you get. And that's what makes [00:12:30] Yellowstone, Yellowstone, is this sticky, gooey magma. So there's a lot of obsidian here.

Dr. Jesse Reimink: Yeah. Chris, this is really interesting. I was just listening to a talk a while back, uh, from somebody at Penn State who's a, a glass researcher. Probably the world's best researcher of glass. And, and it this, what I'm gonna say is not about glass, but he described glass and obsidian is a glass. He described glass as a liquid that flows over millions of years, and that's a really accurate description. An obsidian is a [00:13:00] glass you just described that minerals couldn't grow and it was so sticky. All the atoms got locked in place and could not diffuse to grow minerals out of it. So it's a glass which has no internal structure and when a glass is like a liquid and has no internal structure to it, you brought up why it's so valuable is because you can. Use that sort of flint knapping and make really sharp edges out of it. There's no internal structure to it, so you can kind of break it however you want and you can break it along really sharp edges, which

Chris Bolhuis: If you’re good at it. I've [00:13:30] tried…

Dr. Jesse Reimink: the, uh, it was actually Chris, there was, actually a recent, uh, a recent article about how the fact that Flint knapping is actually really dangerous. Like you can really, seriously hurt yourself by Flint knapping and presumably ancient humans as well. So really skilled workers. This was kind of a dangerous task for early cultures.

Chris Bolhuis: And I also wanna say one other thing about obsidian, and then there's a question that I wanna throw your way, Jesse. But it's also very unstable at the surface. There's no such thing as old obsidian at the surface of the earth.[00:14:00]And I'm saying old though, in a geologic sense, not a humanity sense, you know, it's beyond thousands of years old, but in geology…

Dr. Jesse Reimink: There's million year old obsidian, but there's not billion year old obsidian. Yeah, put it that way.

Chris Bolhuis: that's right.

Dr. Jesse Reimink: that's a good Chris, Yeah.

Chris Bolhuis: Okay, Jesse, is it okay if we transition away from how obsidian formed? Because I have something that

I wanna throw at you that's right up your alley.

Dr. Jesse Reimink: Oh yeah. If it's to my alley for sure, we can, yeah. Let's deviate to my alley. Absolutely. That sounds totally fine.

Chris Bolhuis: okay. Here we go. [00:14:30] So for everyone else now it's Jesse's opportunity to finally contribute to the conversation. So here we go. Here it is, Jesse. Here's what I want you to talk about, because you are the expert in the room on this For sure. Each obsidian lava flow has its own distinctive chemical signature that can be identified by this kind of x-ray fluorescence. Jesse, can you talk about first of all, like, what am I saying? What do I mean that it has its own chemical signature? And really quickly, don't [00:15:00] spend like a lot of time on this, please, but how, how do they know where a lava flow came from?

Dr. Jesse Reimink: Well, Chris, sit down, get your drink ready because we're diving into geochemistry here. No, seriously though. Yeah. Keep me outta the weeds here, but let me start here with the chemical signature part. So each lava flow has a slightly unique chemical composition to it. That means it has silica and it has aluminum, it has sodium, it has potassium. It has all those elements, but it'll have those in different proportions. And each lava flow has kind of a [00:15:30] unique chemical fingerprint to it. This x-ray fluorescence, the technique that you just mentioned, this is basically, we use this in our lab all the time to identify rocks. Basically, any rock that I ever collect in the field, we bring it in. One of the first things we do is this x-ray fluorescence analysis. And basically you blast it with x-rays and the elements in that rock, absorb that x-ray energy, and then give off other types of energy. And the types of energy they give off is a signature of what element is in the rock. So we can kind of work out the proportions of silica, [00:16:00] aluminum, sodium, potassium, et cetera, in the rock itself. So each lava flow has a unique signature, and this becomes really powerful for archeology. And the reason we're bringing it up here so we can analyze the chemistry of a given obsidian flow in Yellowstone National Park. We can also analyze the chemical composition of artifacts, these Clovis points, for instance, we can analyze the chemical composition and we can use those to fingerprint where the obsidian came from. And so, Chris, this is just really kind of amazing. Artifacts [00:16:30] made of Yellowstone Obsidian, specifically from Obsidian Cliffs, which is in image number five, shows where this is in Yellowstone National Park. But artifacts from this obsidian have been found all over the Rockies, the Great Plains, all the way up into Alberta, Canada, as far east as Wisconsin, our home in Michigan and Ontario. So, This was like a, a commodity that was widely traded. This Yellowstone obsidian, these artifacts from Yellowstone obsidian. It's amazing.

Chris Bolhuis: it. It really is amazing. Because we're talking about [00:17:00] something that's 11,000 years ago. You know, in modern era that's easy to like understand how things would get so far dispersed. But that's unbelievable actually, that it was found that far away from Yellowstone, which speaks to its importance. This was really necessary for their livelihood.

Dr. Jesse Reimink: And speaks to the importance of Yellowstone National Park and the really speaks to why we have to do this chapter about the human history. Like Yellowstone has been important to humans for a long time. It's important to us in our modern society. It has been [00:17:30] important for a long time.

Chris Bolhuis: That's right. Let's talk about obsidian cliff a little bit specifically. This is right in between Norris and Mammoth, and you can see this again in Image five. Obsidian Cliff is an exposed cliff face that's about a hundred feet. And this is what makes Obsidian Cliff kind of special. The, if you look at image number six, this is the best we could do in terms of what obsidian cliff looks like, cuz it's kind of a big place and it's hard to capture in a photo like this. But [00:18:00] most obsidian occurs as small rocks that are mixed in with other rocks, but not here. It's mostly pure, which makes it ideal for making tools and weapons and points and things like this.

Dr. Jesse Reimink: And that goes back to the stickiness of the lava, right? Most of the time when this stuff gets extruded on the surface, it's kind of little burps and blips that come out., cause it's so sticky, it doesn't flow. It's not like a basalt flow in Hawaii that flows all over the entire island. This comes out in little [00:18:30] blurps and spits out except for here, this is just a larger obsidian flow. And Chris, this has a, a special place in your heart, I think obsidian Cliff, right?

Chris Bolhuis: it does. I mean, a long time ago, and I'm not gonna tell you how long ago because, uh, you know, you always rip on me about how old I am.

Dr. Jesse Reimink: See above - the gray beard.

Chris Bolhuis: However, I did get the. It was a, I'm gonna say honor. It was a privilege to see this, but it was also a little bit disturbing. But I, I got to watch a grizzly, take down an elk calf right on the cliff. [00:19:00] And it was, it was amazing. And it, was early in the season, so there weren't a ton of people there, and we just kind of got to have it, to ourselves for a little while. So kind of cool. But I do wanna say too, that obsidian cliff, this is in the United States. It's the most widely dispersed obsidian by hunter-gatherers. That's amazing.

Dr. Jesse Reimink: Yeah,

Chris Bolhuis: Way up in northwest Wyoming, we, that stuff made its way all over the United States.

Dr. Jesse Reimink: [00:19:30] Yeah, it's totally cool. It's totally cool. And in Yellowstone National Park, it's not the only place that obsidian exists. There are other ones, uh, off a trail in Biscuit Geyser Basin is a good one. There's a Mystic Falls Trail. Beautiful waterfall, the river there cuts right through obsidian. So obsidian is around in Yellowstone National Park. Just this obsidian Cliffs is a really special place from an archeological perspective. So, Chris, let's move on to the second or complex that we're gonna highlight, which is the Cody culture. And this is significantly [00:20:00] later in time. What should we highlight? What's worth summarizing here?

Chris Bolhuis: Well, Yeah, you, you said something about the time, so we're talking about now eight to 10,000 years ago, and again, this is the Cody culture - not the Clovis culture. We have found over 70 points in knives in Yellowstone - mostly along the lake shore. So, Jesse, real quick again, how do we know the timestamp on this? We're saying eight to 10,000 years ago. How do we know that?

Dr. Jesse Reimink: Oh yeah. So this goes to radiocarbon dating, which some people might have heard about. We've talked [00:20:30] about it on our podcast a, a fair amount. But basically Carbon-14 is generated in the atmosphere naturally. and, uh, Chris, you were alive during atomic weapons testing? I think so. So you, you're,

Chris Bolhuis: I was not alive. Okay. I was not.

Dr. Jesse Reimink: Oh, my mistake. Well,

Chris Bolhuis: Sad thing is, I think you actually thought that I was.

Dr. Jesse Reimink: You, I think you might have been, I think I'm pretty sure you were. No. Um, you know, so humans have changed the, the Carbon 14 production with nuclear weapons testing, but this occurs naturally. Carbon 14 has [00:21:00] naturally generated the atmosphere, so anything alive will take up that carbon. Carbon 14 specifically. That carbon 14 will decay at a fixed rate, has a half life around about 5,400 years. So we can go back and look at carbon things. We can look at charcoal in a fire pit, an ancient fire pit, and we can look at how much carbon 14 is in there. And that gives us a clear timestamp on it. It gives us an age when that wood died. It is basically dating when that Carbon-bearing material died. So that's how this works.

Chris Bolhuis: You know what else [00:21:30] is important about this radiocarbon dating is because of that, We know that there's been a rather continuous population, or I should say there's been a rather continuous occupation of Yellowstone for the last 9,000 years, and we know this through looking at debris really in fire pits, right? I mean, that's what we're using to date the radiocarbon, the carbon-14.

Dr. Jesse Reimink: That's exactly right. And I think Chris is an important thing to point out is that there's not really a lot of evidence to this somewhat pervasive [00:22:00] idea that Native Americans avoided thermal areas. There's really not evidence for that. Archeologists have excavated hundreds of campsites that are near the geysers, right near the geysers. And the Shoshone people would soak horns of bighorn sheep in the bubbling hot springs to shape them for their bows. So they'd use this to kind of soak and, make the horns of the bighorn sheep much more pliable so that they could make them into bow shapes and use them for their hunting tools.

Chris Bolhuis: Yeah. In fact, you know, Yellowstone's geysers and [00:22:30] their mud pots and hot springs, and even the fumaroles, archeologists now believe that they were regarded as places of great spiritual power for the Native Americans. So rather than avoid them, they utilized them. So that I think is another really common misconception that I, is not born out to be true.

Dr. Jesse Reimink: Okay, Chris, just to, to wrap up this sort of pre-European history, we talked about how there was these 27 different cultures that existed in this place over time. Hardly any of them ever stayed year [00:23:00] round. Sheep eater Cliffs is a really kind of a very cool place that has columnar jointed basalt near the Mammoth hot Springs area, and these are named after the sheep eater people who were the only ones who stayed over the relatively harsh winters that occur…

Chris Bolhuis: Can you imagine?

Dr. Jesse Reimink: staying there over winter. No, no, you'd wanna be right near a hot spring.

Chris Bolhuis: Listen, in the modern era, Of really techy, fancy clothes and stuff that keeps you warm. I don't think I would wanna stay in [00:23:30] Yellowstone year round. I mean that, it's

Dr. Jesse Reimink: I agree.

Chris Bolhuis: a testament to durability for sure. So…

Dr. Jesse Reimink: the sheep beater people, those were the, they were the champs that that overwintered.

Chris Bolhuis: But Sheep Eater Cliffs is a cool spot. I'm gonna tell you- It’s a cool spot.

Dr. Jesse Reimink: Totally. So Chris, that's a good time for us to move on to the sort of post European settlement of North America history of Yellowstone National Park. And we're gonna work through a timeline here in image number seven, shows this timeline with some key things that we wanna point out. And so the first white people that really visited [00:24:00] this area in the late 17 hundreds were. As with most of the West French and American trappers and fur traders that kind of came through the region. And in 1806 John Colter, which many things are named after John Colter in the park, came to explore Yellowstone National Park and was really the first white man to pass through the Geyser basins in the Yellowstone Lake region.

Chris Bolhuis: That's right. And another like name that you see all over the the Yellowstone area. In the Teton area is Jim Bridger. Jim Bridger was a Trapper, Frontiersman, he was a [00:24:30] mountain man. He visited as early as 1830 and he, he was, he was known to exaggerate a little bit and his “exaggerated” stories about the wonders of Yellowstone encouraged further European exploration.

Dr. Jesse Reimink: yeah, so Jim Bridger, the great exaggerator there, of the 1830s is shown in image number eight. Nice little sketch of him. Then the next sort of major event and, and these names will resonate. For you that are planning on [00:25:00] going to Yellowstone. The Washburn Langford Dome expedition really started to capture the attention of government officials, first of all. And in 1871 and 1872, the US government sent a survey party under a geologist. Let's double click on that under a geologist Ferdinand.

Chris Bolhuis: Jesse? A what?

Dr. Jesse Reimink: A geologist, Chris, a geologist leading the expedition. Um, the Ferdinand Hayden was the name - as in Hayden Valley. and they wrote a bunch of valuable scientific reports, but it also, [00:25:30] importantly, these were really highlighted by a very famous painter, Thomas Moran, who painted some very just stunning, stunning, huge murals of Yellowstone National Park and the broader region. We're showing one in image number nine here, that's the, the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone there. But these paintings were brought back to the east of United States and. They really captured the attention of the East Coast of the United States for showcasing how beautiful and [00:26:00] dramatic and stunning the west was. So this Thomas Marin really kind of put this on the scene, put Yellowstone Park on the scene with some of these paintings.

Chris Bolhuis: real quick, I just wanna point to some areas that are named after these people. Hayden, Ferdinand Hayden, the geologist. That's Hayden Valley. And Hayden Valley is a mecca for Wolf Watchers and just wildlife in general. You're almost sure to get stuck in a buffalo jam driving through Hayden Valley. Moran Thomas Moran, he has a mountain named after [00:26:30] him, just south of Yellowstone National Park in the Grand Tetons. That's Mount Moran with the big black Basaltic dike that cuts through that mountain. It's pretty awesome. So anyway, those are just some of the names. Hey, listen, you know, you talked about this expedition, which was 1871-1872. And then not very long after that, March 1st, 1872, president Grant signed Yellowstone into existence, so it is the first national park in US history.

Dr. Jesse Reimink: That's exactly right. And the the, I think the [00:27:00] sort of governorship or the governance of the Yellowstone National Park is kind of an interesting story too, and is worth pointing out in 1886, the US Army became responsible for protecting the park and they patrolled these, really remote areas, poachers were a problem. They protected the thermal areas and they did some interpretive tasks as best the army could do. And, you know, it's not always bright and sunny. They were brought in to push out Native Americans for which Yellowstone National Park was a, a, a sacred place in many cases. And so, You know, pushed out Native [00:27:30] Americans. The National Parks since 1916 though, have been governed by the Department of the Interior, and I mean, Chris, you and I are just huge fans and proponents of national parks. I mean, we just love the sort of goal of the National Park system, which is to educate the public about the natural and human history here and really to protect them and preserve them. And these are our parks. We can go visit 'em. They're for the people, by the people owned by the people. And we can go experience these amazing, amazing [00:28:00] places for very little.

Chris Bolhuis: Absolutely. And that's a really interesting thing. It’s a stated goal of the Department of Interior to

interpret the history of these places. I mean, and I think that's really cool. We have a quote by Freeman Tilden, the author who wrote a lot about the purpose of national parks in the early days. Here’s what he said: “through interpretation, understanding; Through understanding, appreciation; through appreciation, protection.” And[00:28:30] that resonates with you and I a lot. I mean, you know, because the more we know about Yellowstone and all these national parks, the more connected we are and the more connected we are to these places, the more we just have this passion to protect them.

Dr. Jesse Reimink: Yeah, and I think Chris, this is a, a great point to talk about the sort of changing of the paradigms of what protection and regulation mean because that has not always been the same throughout time. And in 1974, the natural regulation paradigm came about. And [00:29:00] so before this time hunting was not really regulated until the army took over. Then the army took over and hunting was regulated. But predators were killed really regularly and bison and elk were culled, to keep populations in check because their natural predators were being killed all the time. This changed in 1974 and Yellowstone is a, a very large park. It's not nearly the biggest in North America, but it is a very large park and it's one of the few that is big enough to test the model of what happens when you sort [00:29:30] of let nature take back over? And this has kind of come through in a couple different ways. First of all, with how often and frequently do we fight forest fires? That's been kind of a, a debate or was a debate back in time. And then also sort of how much do you manage and cull the natural predator species, I suppose. How do you shoot the wolves?

Chris Bolhuis: How do you manage that whole situation? Right. I mean, and the wolves are a perfect example of this too. They were hunted to extinction in the early to mid 19 hundreds and, they were [00:30:00] then reintroduced in the late 19 hundreds. So, it on the head, Jesse. And this is one thing that if you've never been to Yellowstone, then you're going to come to appreciate very soon. Yellowstone is an enormous place. It's huge. It takes a long time to get anywhere in Yellowstone, and then that can often be compounded by wildlife jams, particularly, you know, bison jams on in Hayden Valley. I mean,

Dr. Jesse Reimink: that's right.

Chris Bolhuis: It's a, common occurrence, I'm telling you. Just

Dr. Jesse Reimink: [00:30:30] Oh man, that's true.

Chris Bolhuis: bring snacks and water for the car…

Dr. Jesse Reimink: Yeah, that's right. It is a big park with a lot, a lot to see. So, hey Chris, we're gonna end all of these chapters with a frequently asked question or two, and so why don't we start right up front with how did Yellowstone get its name? That's a frequently asked question and probably there's a few misunderstandings out there.

Chris Bolhuis: Yeah, there are a couple ideas on this. Yellowstone National Park is named after the Yellowstone River This is the major river running through the park, [00:31:00] and according to French Canadian trappers, this is the way the story goes. In the 18 hundreds, they were asked the name of the river from this Minatarre trib, who live in now Eastern Montana. And they responded in their tongue, they responded. That translates into Yellowstone River here's the way it goes. It's because of the yellow sandstone boulders that, line the banks of the river.

That's really what is traditionally regarded is how Yellowstone got its name [00:31:30] after the river. I don't really like that interpretation a whole lot, but I don't have anything to say about it because when you're in Yellowstone, Most of the rocks around inside the Caldera are this really like light colored yellow Rhyolite, this volcanic rock that speaks to the, the geologic history of it, which we're gonna get to started in chapter two. I prefer that story, but that's not the accepted story on the origin of the name of Yellowstone National Park. So, Yeah. Yeah.

Dr. Jesse Reimink: Fair enough.[00:32:00]

Chris Bolhuis: So, all right. So Jesse, one more. Old pictures show a really big boulder. If you look at image number ten in your stack, the last image - a big boulder at the brink of tower fall. When did this boulder fall? Cuz they used to, they took bets on this.

Dr. Jesse Reimink: Yeah, this is a funny story. Um, so there are old photographs that clearly show this boulder, and there's one of them in that gif. The first one just shows that there's this boulder perched at the top of the waterfall. The short story is a fell in June, 1986. But you're right, people were betting on this, it sort of hung [00:32:30] out there for hundreds of years, probably. It's just kind of one of these amazing precariously perched geological features, which I don't know, they're, they're always so fun. Chris, you and I have seen a, several of these. We saw, I forget what the big boulder is called in Acadia National Park in, uh, up in Maine, but you know, the big boulder.

Chris Bolhuis: Well it’s on Bubbles Trail - I don't know if it has a name.

Dr. Jesse Reimink: It might be bubble rock, but yeah. You know, we've seen several of these types of features. This one unfortunately fell in 1986. And then the second part of that gif is the, tower falls as we see it today.

Chris Bolhuis: And they were [00:33:00] taking bets on the hour or the day in which it would fall, and

Dr. Jesse Reimink: Yeah.

Chris Bolhuis: it stuck around for another a hundred years. So,

Dr. Jesse Reimink: So fun. So fun. Hey Chris, I think that's a wrap for this chapter. Next chapter, we're gonna do a really, a very fun 30,000 foot view over the geologic history of Yellowstone National Park for billions of years. That's, just really cool and starts to give us a, uh, an overview of the park before we start to dive into some of the deeper geological stories that are there in Yellowstone National Park.

Chris Bolhuis: There you go. [00:33:30] Well put. That's a wrap, Jesse. Cheers.

Dr. Jesse Reimink: peace.