A Place Called Yellowstone: The Epic History of the World's First National Park

by Randall K. Wilson, Phil Thron (Read by)

Overview

WINNER OF THE BARBARA AND DAVID ZALAZNICK BOOK PRIZE

INSIDE YELLOWSTONE NATIONAL PARK: Discover the epic history of the first US national park in this historical adventure for fans of American history, the Wild West, and the hit show

It has been called Wonderland, America's Serengeti, the crown jewel of the National Park System, and America's best idea. But how did this faraway landscape evolve into one of the most recognizable places in the world? As the birthplace of the national park system, Yellowstone witnessed the first-ever attempt to protect wildlife, to restore endangered species, and to develop a new industry centered on nature tourism.

Yellowstone remains a national icon, one of the few entities capable of bridging ideological divides in the United States. Yet the park's history is also filled with episodes of conflict and exclusion, setting precedents for Native American land dispossession, land rights disputes, and prolonged tensions between commercialism and environmental conservation. Yellowstone's legacies are both celebratory and problematic. A Place Called Yellowstone tells the comprehensive story of Yellowstone National Park as the story of the nation itself.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9798228593381
Publisher:	HighBridge Company
Publication date:	09/16/2025
Product dimensions:	5.20(w) x 5.70(h) x (d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

RANDALL K. WILSON, PhD, is a professor of environmental studies at Gettysburg College, where he teaches courses on environmental policy, natural resource management, sustainable communities, and the geography of the American West. He has served on the USDA Forest Service’s National Science Panel and on the board of directors for the Rural Geography Specialty Group within the Association of American Geographers. He earned a Fulbright Fellowship to the University of Vienna. His book America’s Public Lands: From Yellowstone to Smokey Bear and Beyond was named an Outstanding Academic Title from Choice Reviews and won John Brinckerhoff Jackson Prize from the Association of American Geographers.

Editorial Reviews

WINNER OF THE BARBARA AND DAVID ZALAZNICK BOOK PRIZE
Finalist for the High Plains International Book Award

"Wilson’s talent as a storyteller shines through in turning dry bureaucratic bumbling and crony corruption into a focus on individual exploits and entertaining tales. It makes for great reading." —Lorraine Berry, Los Angeles Times

"Vivid and gripping . . . A Place Called Yellowstone is indeed an epic that chronicles facts, explores the relationship the park holds as an adventure site and protector of nature and wildlife, and brings past and present into stunning focus." —K. M. Sandrick, Historical Novels Review

"A capably drawn portrait of an iconic American place that remains of world significance." —Kirkus Reviews

"Tensions will always exist between the tourism industry and the conservation movement over Yellowstone's precious resources, but Wilson’s account shows an unfolding awareness and sensitivity on both sides to the treasures that lie within those 2.2 million acres." —Booklist

“In this fascinating account of America's most famous landscape, Randall Wilson tells the history of Yellowstone Park and how it relates to the larger story of the American West. In vivid detail, Wilson weaves a compelling tale about a then-revolutionary concept—preserve a spectacular wilderness from commercial exploitation while opening it to the public. A Place Called Yellowstone is a must read for anyone who cares about Americans' relationship to the natural world and the nation's legacy of public lands.” —Peter Stark, author of Gallop Toward the Sun: Tecumseh and William Henry Harrison's Struggle for the Destiny of a Nation

"The Yellowstone landscape has stirred everyone who ever set foot there. What Wilson achieves in this book is a fascinating account of how a remote place on the map became something iconic. It's a winding historical adventure—at times exhilarating, at times horrifying—that reveals what makes a place renowned. His tales of this tectonic landscape will move you!" ––Christopher J. Preston, author of Tenacious Beasts

"In A Place Called Yellowstone, Randall Wilson addresses a simple question: How did such a geographically isolated park evolve into a national icon that has shaped the way Americans interact with and value nature? His thoughtful, wide-ranging, and engaging answer takes us from the eruption of the Yellowstone Supervolcano 2.1 million years ago to today’s first steps toward co-managing Yellowstone by the National Park Service and the Indigenous peoples who know it as a homeland.” ––Terence Young, author of Heading Out: A History of American Camping

“Randall Wilson's lifelong passion for outdoor activities like hiking, camping, and backpacking in the Great American West led him to Yellowstone National Park more than twenty-five years ago, and like so many others Randy fell in love with the world's first national park and all that it embodies. The result is this fine book, exceedingly well written and informative on environmental and human history beginning with the colossal explosions of the Yellowstone caldera that set the stage for what we see today, as well as the human dramas that have played out since the first Paleo Indians appeared more than 13,000 years ago to the arrival of the first European Americans in the area, the creation of Yellowstone Park, and then all the way through to the present day. Well written, massively researched, and personally experienced by Randy during countless visits to the park, A Place Called Yellowstone is highly recommended!” —Jeff Henry, fifty-year resident and employee in Yellowstone National Park, photographer and historian, and author of ten books on Yellowstone

From the Publisher

2024-09-28
History of the exploration of the Yellowstone River country and its establishment as the world’s first national park.

Yellowstone, writes Gettysburg College environmental studies professor Wilson, “is remarkably distant from just about everywhere and everyone else in the continental United States.” For all that, it draws 4 million visitors a year. It was always remote, little settled by Indigenous people until relatively recently. Early on, an American explorer with a background in geology, a junior Army officer named Gustavus Cheyney Doane, recognized that Yellowstone was a vast caldera formed by ancient volcanic action; by Wilson’s reckoning, the “largest recorded eruption in human history,” that of Indonesia’s Mount Tambora, blasted out just 6% of the volcanic debris that Yellowstone’s last eruption did—and, as catastrophists are fond of pointing out, Yellowstone is long overdue for another. Wilson’s early explorers made for a hardy breed, though strange: The Sioux who encountered one geologist at work must have thought he was crazy for carrying a backpack full of stones, and they left him alone for it—adds Wilson, “In human cultures across the world, mental illness (real or imagined) is often cause for compassion rather than hostility.” Although cattle ranchers and miners resisted the effort, Yellowstone finally became a national park, helped along in the end, Wilson reckons, by a strain of 19th-century Romanticism that held that nature “offered humans a path to moral and spiritual well-being and deserved respect for its own sake.” Surprisingly, magnate John D. Rockefeller, as Wilson shows, was highly instrumental in protecting the park. Bedeviling park naturalists then and now was how to balance human visitation with protection for wild animals, who today include restored populations of wolves, grizzly bears, bison, and other creatures.

A capably drawn portrait of an iconic American place that remains of world significance.

Kirkus Reviews