Down the YellowstoneFreeman, Lewis R. (Lewis Ransome)
General
Down the Yellowstone
Freeman, Lewis R. (Lewis Ransome)
Yellowstone River
Mammoth Hot Springs, in spite of the passing of Fort Yellowstone, I
found to have augmented greatly since my former visit. Most of my old
friends were gone, however, Assistant Superintendent Lindsay being the
only one remaining who recalled my coming and going. In company with a
couple of officers from the Post we had, I believe, enjoyed an afternoon
of fearful and wonderful tennis on the still ice- and snow-covered court.
Federal Judge Meldrum, terror of poachers, had been in the party twenty
years ago, but said he did not remember me. I was rather glad he had had
no occasion to. Had I ever been connected with the geyser that Private
Ikey Einstein soaped, or with aiding and abetting Sergeant Hope to drive
a flock of sheep over the bluffs into the Gardiner River, the Judge
would doubtless have been able to refer to the official memoranda to jog
his memory--possibly some thumb prints and a side and front view of my
criminal phiz.
To my great regret I learned that F. Jay Haynes, official photographer
of the Park, had died but a few months before. In his place I found Jack
Haynes, his son, who is brilliantly maintaining the reputation of his
illustrious father, both as an artist and as a factor in forwarding the
destiny of the Yellowstone. What the intrepid Kolb Brothers are doing in
photographing the Grand Canyon of the Colorado, what Byron Harmon is
doing in the Canadian Rockies, that the Haynes family have done for the
Yellowstone Park. I say "have done," because their work, having been
carried on during nearly four decades, is much more nearly complete
than that of the others who have worked a shorter time in a rather less
concentrated sphere.
But F. Jay Haynes was far more than a great photographic artist. He was
a great lover of the out-of-doors generally and of that of Yellowstone
Park particularly. In his organization of the transportation companies
to serve respectively the east and west entrances to the Park, it was
the bringing of the latter to the people that was the main consideration
in his mind; the financial success of his ventures was secondary. I
believe these were successful on both counts, however. I know that Mr.
Haynes is given the credit for inducing the late E. H. Harriman to build
a branch of the Union Pacific to the western entrance of the Park, now
the principal portal so far as number of tourists is concerned. They
have recently done the memory of Mr. Haynes the honour of naming a
mountain after him. This is a fitting tribute, and well deserved. Far
more impressive a monument, however, are his pictures. Mount Haynes may
be seen for a distance of perhaps a hundred miles; the Yellowstone
photographs of F. Jay Haynes may be seen at the ends of the world.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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