title: The Discovery of Yellowstone Park: Journal of the Washburn Expedition to the Yellowstone and Firehole Rivers in the Year 1870
author: Nathaniel Pitt Langford
description: <DIV><P>For ten years (1960&#8211;69), Aubrey L. Haines was National Park Service historian. In addition to contributing the foreword to this book, he has edited <I>Osborne Russell's Journal of a Trapper</I>, also a Bison Book.</P></DIV>
zlib_text: # THE DISCOVERY OF YELLOWSTONE PARK
  
  Journal of the Washburn Expedition to the Yellowstone and Firehole Rivers in
  the Year 1870
  
    
  
  ## by Nathaniel Pitt Langford
  
    
  
  ### 1905
  
  * * *
  
    
  
  ## CONTENTS
  
    
  
  Foreword (not included)
  
  [Introduction](text00000.html#INT)
  
  [Journal](text00000.html#RULE4_1)
  
  [Appendix](text00000.html#APX)
  
  Index (not included)
  
  ## INTRODUCTION
  
  When the rumored discovery in the year 1861 of extensive gold placers on
  Salmon river was confirmed, the intelligence spread through the states like
  wild fire. Hundreds of men with dependent families, who had been thrown out of
  employment by the depressed industrial condition of the country and by the
  Civil War, and still others actuated by a thirst for gain, utilized their
  available resources in providing means for an immediate migration to the land
  of promise. Before midsummer they had started on the long and perilous
  journey. How little did they know of its exposures! The deserts, destitute of
  water and grass, the al