Few people expressed any regret, because of the hardships incident to
travel by stagecoach. Still, it is the opinion of many that advantages
exceeded inconvenience. The West, as now seen from the window of a train
or motor car, is not the country introduced by stagecoach. With all the
additional comfort, there is a loss of an indefinable something, subtle,
yet well understood by those who have driven at a six-mile-an-hour pace
through the almost unbroken solitude of another era. In contrast,
regularly scheduled airplane flights over the Park have been available
from time to time since 1937. There are no airports in the Park, but
they are to be found nearby at West Yellowstone and Gardiner, Montana.
It should also be remembered that during the previous forty years
innumerable private parties made leisurely visits and camped where they
pleased. The Park must have been an idyllic place in those “horse and
buggy” days, a hunting and fishing Elysium, especially until 1894. Since
then fishermen may take a generous catch of trout without any license
except a bona fide presence in the Park.
Although admitted under the most onerous terms the automobile
revolutionized the travel there as elsewhere. Always well-filled with
regulations, official bulletins now fairly bristled with instructions to
motorists. Fees were $7.50 for a single trip or $10.00 for the season;
all cars were required to enter the gates between 6:45 and 7:15 A.M. A
printed schedule specified the time of arrival at, and departure from,
the control stations.[251] Fines were imposed for arrival at any point
before the approved lapse of time at the rate of $0.50 per minute for
each of the first five minutes, $1.00 per minute for each of the next
twenty minutes, $25.00 fine or ejection from the Park, or both, at the
discretion of the Acting Superintendent, for being more than twenty-five
minutes early. The following regulations and restrictions were strictly
enforced: Speed, twelve miles per hour ascending steep grades; ten miles
per hour descending steep grades; eight miles per hour approaching sharp
curves and passing other vehicles. The maximum speed limit in 1922 was
twenty-five miles per hour. Teams had the right of way and also the
inside of the roadway in passing. Motorists were required to sound horns
at all curves where the road was not in view at least two hundred yards
ahead. Surely the motorists were in a defensive position, but they came
anyway. A total of 3,513 auto passengers toured the Park in the
abbreviated season after August 1, 1915. The grand total for the year
was 51,895 in all conveyances.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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