M. Mark Miller is a fifth-generation Montanan who grew up on a ranch in southwest Montana 90 miles from Yellowstone Park. His interest in early park travel began when he was a small boy listening to his grandmother's tales of baking bread in geysers and tossing red flannels into Old Faithful so it's next eruption would be tinted pink.
While attending the University of Montana, Miller worked for The Montana Standard and The Daily Missoulian. After graduating, he worked for newspapers in Utah and Tennessee before earning a doctorate at Michigan State University. He taught journalism for 25 years at the Universities of Wisconsin and Tennessee.
In addition to his academic duties, Miller retained an active interest in the history and literature of the American West. Because of this avocation, the University of Tennessee asked him to lead a book discussion group focused on the Montana novel.
Miller has been researching early travel to Yellowstone since 2003. His expertise on the history and literature of Yellowstone has won him a position on the Speakers Bureau of Humanities Montana, an affiliate of the National Endowment for the Humanities. His articles on Yellowstone Park and Montana history have appeared in the Big Sky Journal and the Pioneer Museum Quarterly. He is working on a novel for young adults about a 14-year-old boy's adventures in Yellowstone Park in 1871 and a history of Yellowstone travel.
