not travel to Yellowstone until July 1894 making his way via train, coach, wagon and horseback from Laramie via Salt Lake City, Henry's Lake and the Madison River. His first night in the park was spent at the Fountain Hotel near the Fountain Paint Pots area of the Lower Geyser Basin. There he met Captain George S. Anderson, U.S. Army, the current park superintendent. Meldrum traveled to Mammoth Hot Springs the next day and took up residence and an office in the Mammoth Hot Springs Hotel. One of Meldrum's first duties was to supervise the construction of the Commissioner's building, funded by the Lacey Act and designed by a local soldier. The Fort Yellowstone Historic District application describes the building, which still stands today: Famous cases The 1897 Canyon holdup On August 14, 1897 two armed men held up a caravan of four stages and an Army ambulance en route from Canyon to Mammoth. A total of $630 was stolen from park visitors. The resulting case: United States vs. Gus Smitzer, alias Little Gus; and George Reeb, alias Morphine Charley was the result of two weeks of interesting detective work by the U.S. Army, army scouts and Edgar Howell, the infamous poacher. Witness accounts were insufficient to identify and arrest the robbers so the Army was engaged find whatever evidence could be found near the crime. They located a variety of circumstantial evidence in a recently abandoned campsite just north of Grebe Lake that tied the robbers to the scene. Edgar Howell was engaged to identify and find the robbers upon the advice of Frank Jay Haynes who believed Howell was a good man and knew all the bad guys in Yellowstone. On August 30, 1897, Smitzer and Reeb were arrested and shortly thereafter Meldrum heard the evidence and bound them over for trial in the Federal court in Cheyenne, Wyoming. In May 1898 they were convicted and sentenced to three years in prison. In recognition of Edgar Howell's contribution to the case, Meldrum awarded him $150 of the $750 reward put up by the Army and park transportation company The Case of William Binkley Interesting relations While serving in Yellowstone, Meldrum's niece, Miss Louise Chase from New York visited him in the park in the early 1900s. There she met Robert Reamer the Old Faithful Inn architect whom she later married in 1911. Death John Meldrum was in poor