Marshall's Hotel, subsequently known as the Firehole Hotel was the first public accommodations built in the Firehole River geyser basins of Yellowstone National Park and among the earliest tourist hotels in Yellowstone. The first hotel was built in 1880 by George W. Marshall (1838-1917) and his partner John B. Goff and was located just west of confluence of the Firehole River and Nez Perce Creek. A second hotel, the Firehole Hotel, was built in 1884 in partnership with George Graham Henderson very near the present day Nez Perce Picnic area. The hotels operated for eleven years under various ownership ceasing operation in 1891.[1] By 1895, all the structures except a few cabins associated with the two hotels had been razed.[2]
George Marshall had a U.S. government mail contract to carry mail from Virginia City, Montana to Mammoth Hot Springs in 1879. It was cancelled at the end of that year. The route from Virginia City to Mammoth took Marshall over the Madison Plateau on the Old Fountain Pack Trail (abandoned today). This trail passed right by the confluence of the Firehole River and Nez Perce Creek on its way to Mammoth. Upon losing his mail contract, Marshall chose to build a cabin on the Firehole River with the aim of servicing visitors to the park.
Carl Shurz[sic], Sec of Interior was out visiting the park in 80 and had to sleep out under the trees near my cabin one night it rained. He told me next morning I would have given twenty dollars $20.00 to have got into a house last night and suggested that I should prepare to keep travelers said that he would see I got a permit from the Government and when they got their leeses [sic] filed would see I got a leese [sic]. I remained on a permit til last year [1884] when Sec. of Interior granted me a lease for 10 yrs. My first year here I did not make anything, second year came out $180 dollars in debt.
—George Marshall, Biographical Statement, reported in Whittlesley (1885)[1]
In the 1881 season, there were six rooms in the hotel, a lounge, a dining room, a kitchen and quarters for the Marshalls. There were two guest rooms. An 1881 visitor described the hotel thus:
... the hum of voices filled the apartment, everyone feeling at home and at perfect eas in regular Western frontier style--one man as good as another, whether hostler or millionaire. In one corner a couple were having a friendly game of cards; in another, guns and pistols were being cleaned and oiled, two or three men were buying provisions; others were indulging in poor beer at seventy-five cents a quart bottle, and around the stove a dozen or more were engaged in general conversation about the Park and the geysers.
—Bernard Leckler, An American Camping Trip to the Yellowstone National Park, The American Field, February 9, 1884[1]
1885
In May 1885, Marshall (age 39) and his wife Sarah decided to sell out. With four children having spent four seasons, including four winters in Yellowstone, he sold his interest in the hotel to his partner George Graham Henderson. Henderson had partnered with Henry Klamer, the son-in-law of George L. Henderson (no relation) the owner of the Cottage Hotel at Mammoth Hot Springs. Klamer would later be the owner of the Old Faithful store that is now known as the Lower Hamilton Store. Once Henderson and Klamer owned the property, they renamed it The Firehole Hotel.
1886-1891
In 1886, through a series of ownership transfers, the hotel became the property of the Yellowstone Park Association, owned by Charles Gibson. The Association was becoming the preeminent concessionaire in the park at the time. They were building the Mammoth Hotel (completed in 1886), operated tent hotels at Norris and Canyon, and eventually completed the first Canyon Hotel in 1890.[2] Park visitation was increasing every year and these hotels—Mammoth and Canyon were setting a new standard; one that Marshall's could not meet. In 1886, the U.S. Army took charge of Yellowstone, and then military superintendent Captain Moses Harris began a campaign to rid the park of this particular hotel. In official reports he wrote:
... a hotel building of limited capacity and rude construction, and two cottages used in connection with it (1886). ... needlessly ugly in architectural design, resembling nothing more so much as section houses of a railroad ... All the buildings at this place are of poor and mean construction. (1887)
—Captain Moses Harris, Military Superintendent of Yellowstone National Park, Official reports 1886, 1887
Unfavorable accounts from visitors such as this one did not help the hotel:
The hotel was primative[sic], being an unfinished log-hut, the daylight peering through every plank. My room was about six feet square sufficiently filled with two beds. It boasted neither drawers nor a table and a door that declined to shut. The walls were stretched over with canvas. It could not be described as luxurious and every snore was audible.
—O.S.T Drake, A Lady's Trip to Yellowstone Park, Every Girl's Annual, London, 1887
The location of Marshall's was fully a 1 mile (1.6km) away from the nearest geysers and plans were being made for bigger and better hotels at Lake Hotel and at the Fountain Paint Pots. Army administration of the park had allowed significant improvement of the park's road system and travel time between attractions were significantly shorter than a decade previous. The Yellowstone Park Association constructed the significantly larger and more luxurious Fountain Hotel very near Fountain Paint Pots in 1890 and opened it in the spring of 1891. By June 1891, all the old Marshall or Firehole Hotel properties had been vacated and operations transferred to the Fountain Hotel. The Fountain Hotel operated until 1916. Most of the older Marshall buildings were burned in 1891, but a few survived until 1895 when the Firehole Hotel itself was razed.
Notable visitors and events
Firehole Hotel, 1885
In September 1885, the son of General Oliver O. Howard of the Nez Perce War of 1877, 19-year-old John Howard was visiting the park with his brother James, General Howard, his wife and John's fiancee, a Miss Chase. During their stay at Marshall's, James and John got in a very heated argument over Miss Chase. After another argument with Miss Chase herself, John Howard attempted suicide by shooting himself in the chest. He survived and convalesced in the hotel, but the incident made two separate editions of the Livingston Enterprise.
Known to have stayed at the hotel in 1881 were Wyoming Territorial Governor John W. Hoyt and then Senator Benjamin Harrison (later the 23rd President of the United States).
During the 1884 season, noted naturalist, George Bird Grinnell visited Marshall's and later wrote the following in Forest and Stream about the site as he approached from the west:
The scene in the valley below [Fountain Flats] is one of life and activity. Horses and cattle are browsing on the flat. Mounted men dash hither and thither on their nimble steeds. Two or three stages move briskly along the roads. Heavy wagons laden with trunks, provisions and bedding stand by tents, about which move numbers of people. Men are chopping wood, building fires, or hobbling and picketing out their horses. There are houses--one, two, three, a dozen. It is the old spot, but how changed by the lapse of a few years. When I last looked upon it, it was as silent and untenanted as if never trodden by the foot of man, and now it is a settlement.
—George Bird Grinnell, Field and Stream, January 1885[4]
One of the few marked graves in Yellowstone outside of the Mammoth Hot Springs area is that of Mattie S. Culver, age 30, who died of tuberculosis at the hotel on March 2, 1889. Mrs. Culver was the wife of the hotel's winter keeper, E. C. Culver. Because of frozen ground at the time, Culver's body was stored in two end-to-end barrels outside the hotel until spring. Adelaide Child, the wife of the Yellowstone Park Improvement Company president Harry W. Child, ensured a proper burial, memorial and fenced in tombstone near the hotel. The grave is visible today a few 100 feet (30m) west of the Nez Perce Picnic Area.[1]
Gallery
1909 map showing location of Marshall's Hotel (Old Hotel) at top left
1 2 3 4 5 Whittlesey, Lee H. (October 1980). "Marshall's Hotel in the National Park". Montana The Magazine of Western History. 30 (4). Helena, Montana: Montana Historical Society Press: 42–51.
Yellowstone National Park is a national park of the United States located in the northwest corner of Wyoming and extending into Montana and Idaho. It was established by the 42nd U.S. Congress with the Yellowstone National Park Protection Act and signed into law by President Ulysses S. Grant on March 1, 1872. Yellowstone was the first national park in the U.S. and is also widely held to be the first national park in the world. The park is known for its wildlife and its many geothermal features, especially the Old Faithful geyser, one of its most popular. While it represents many types of biomes, the subalpine forest is the most abundant. It is part of the South Central Rockies forests ecoregion.
The geothermal areas of Yellowstone include several geyser basins in Yellowstone National Park as well as other geothermal features such as hot springs, mud pots, and fumaroles. The number of thermal features in Yellowstone is estimated at 10,000. A study that was completed in 2011 found that a total of 1,283 geysers have erupted in Yellowstone, 465 of which are active during an average year. These are distributed among nine geyser basins, with a few geysers found in smaller thermal areas throughout the Park. The number of geysers in each geyser basin are as follows: Upper Geyser Basin (410), Midway Geyser Basin (59), Lower Geyser Basin (283), Norris Geyser Basin (193), West Thumb Geyser Basin (84), Gibbon Geyser Basin (24), Lone Star Geyser Basin (21), Shoshone Geyser Basin (107), Heart Lake Geyser Basin (69), other areas (33). Although famous large geysers like Old Faithful are part of the total, most of Yellowstone's geysers are small, erupting to only a foot or two. The hydrothermal system that supplies the geysers with hot water sits within an ancient active caldera. Many of the thermal features in Yellowstone build up sinter, geyserite, or travertine deposits around and within them.
The Firehole River is located in northwestern Wyoming, and is one of the two major tributaries of the Madison River. It flows north approximately 21 miles (34 km) from its source in Madison Lake on the Continental Divide to join the Gibbon River at Madison Junction in Yellowstone National Park. It is part of the Missouri River system.
Artemisia Geyser is a geyser in the Upper Geyser Basin of Yellowstone National Park in the United States.
Excelsior Geyser Crater, formerly known as Excelsior Geyser, is a dormant fountain-type geyser in the Midway Geyser Basin of Yellowstone National Park in the United States. Excelsior was named by the Hayden Geological Survey of 1871.
Beehive Geyser is a geyser in the Upper Geyser Basin of Yellowstone National Park in the United States. The 4-foot (1.2 m) tall cone resembles a straw beehive. Beehive's Indicator is a small, jagged cone-type geyser located about 10 feet (3.0 m) from Beehive.
The Washburn Expedition of 1870 explored the region of northwestern Wyoming that two years later became Yellowstone National Park. Led by Henry D. Washburn and Nathaniel P. Langford, and with a U.S. Army escort headed by Lt. Gustavus C. Doane, the expedition followed the general course of the Cook–Folsom–Peterson Expedition made the previous year.
Yellowstone National Park has over 1,100 miles (1,800 km) of blazed and mapped hiking trails, including some that have been in use for hundreds of years. Several of these trails were the sites of historical events. Yellowstone's trails are noted for various geysers, hot springs, and other geothermal features, and for viewing of bald eagles, ospreys, grizzly bears, black bears, wolves, coyotes, bighorn sheep, pronghorns, and free-ranging herds of bison and elk.
The Gibbon River flows east of the Continental Divide in Yellowstone National Park, in northwestern Wyoming, the Northwestern United States. Along with the Firehole River, it is a major tributary of the Madison River, which itself is a tributary of the Missouri River.
The Grand Loop Road is a historic district which encompasses the primary road system in Yellowstone National Park. Much of the 140-mile (230 km) system was originally planned by Captain Hiram M. Chittenden of the US Army Corps of Engineers in the early days of the park, when it was under military administration. The Grand Loop Road provides access to the major features of the park, including the Upper, Midway and Lower geyser basins, Mammoth Hot Springs, Tower Fall, the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone and Yellowstone Lake.
Hamilton's Stores were concessioners in Yellowstone National Park from 1915 to 2002. The stores were founded by Winnipeg native Charles Hamilton, who arrived in Yellowstone in 1905, aged 21, to work for the Yellowstone Park Association. The stores provided tourists with food, souvenirs, and sundries at the major attractions along Yellowstone's Grand Loop Road. Several buildings constructed for Hamilton are significant examples of the National Park Service Rustic style of architecture and have assumed prominence as attractions in their own right. Most are included as contributing structures in National Register of Historic Places historic districts.
The following articles relate to the history, geography, geology, flora, fauna, structures and recreation in Yellowstone National Park.
Firehole Falls is a waterfall on the Firehole River in southwestern Yellowstone National Park in the United States. The falls are located approximately 0.5 miles (0.80 km) upstream from the confluence of the Firehole and Gibbon Rivers at Madison Junction. Firehole Falls has a drop of approximately 40 feet (12 m). The falls are located within Firehole Canyon on Firehole Canyon Drive, a one-way road that parallels the main Madison Junction to Old Faithful road.
Gustavus Cheyney Doane was a U.S. Army Cavalry Captain, explorer, inventor and Civil War soldier who played a prominent role in the exploration of Yellowstone as a member of the Washburn–Langford–Doane Expedition. Doane was a participant in the Marias Massacre of approximately 200 Piegan Blackfeet people.
The Hayden Geological Survey of 1871 explored the region of northwestern Wyoming that later became Yellowstone National Park in 1872. It was led by geologist Ferdinand Vandeveer Hayden. The 1871 survey was not Hayden's first, but it was the first federally funded geological survey to explore and further document features in the region soon to become Yellowstone National Park, and played a prominent role in convincing the U.S. Congress to pass the legislation creating the park. In 1894, Nathaniel P. Langford, the first park superintendent and a member of the Washburn-Langford-Doane Expedition which explored the park in 1870, wrote this about the Hayden expedition:
We trace the creation of the park from the Folsom-Cook expedition of 1869 to the Washburn expedition of 1870, and thence to the Hayden expedition of 1871, Not to one of these expeditions more than to another do we owe the legislation which set apart this "pleasuring-ground for the benefit and enjoyment of the people"
White Dome Geyser is a geyser located in the Lower Geyser Basin in Yellowstone National Park in the United States.
Frank Jay Haynes, known as F. Jay or "the Professor" to almost all who knew him, was a professional photographer, publisher, and entrepreneur from Minnesota who played a major role in documenting through photographs the settlement and early history of the Northwestern United States. He became both the official photographer of the Northern Pacific Railway and of Yellowstone National Park as well as operating early transportation concessions in the park. His photographs were widely published in articles, journals, and books, and turned into stereographs and postcards in the late 19th and early 20th century.
Since before the creation of Yellowstone National Park in 1872, entrepreneurs have established hotels and permanent tourist camps to accommodate visitors to the park. Today, Xanterra Parks and Resorts operates hotel and camping concessions in the park on behalf of the National Park Service. This is a list of hotels and permanent tourist camps that have operated or continue to operate in the park.
The Nez Perce native Americans fled through Yellowstone National Park between August 20 and Sept 7, during the Nez Perce War in 1877. As the U.S. army pursued the Nez Perce through the park, a number of hostile and sometimes deadly encounters between park visitors and the Indians occurred. Eventually, the army's pursuit forced the Nez Perce off the Yellowstone plateau and into forces arrayed to capture or destroy them when they emerged from the mountains of Yellowstone onto the valley of Clark's Fork of the Yellowstone River.
The six national parks, reserves, historic sites, and monuments in Idaho contain a wide variety of interesting places and experiences. These include recreational areas, archeological sites, nature preserves and volcanic parks.
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