The federal government was gradually warming toward the reservation idea in areas of little economic resistance from private interests. Even so, there was no thought of a national park program, but a tract of federal land had actually been made available to the general public for a strictly non-utilitarian purpose. The general direction was visible, but the course was not clearly charted. Reflective visitors to Yosemite, such as Samuel Bowles, pondered a wider application of the land grant and reservation principle. It was in 1865, after Bowles viewed the glories of Yosemite, that he made this statement: The wise cession and dedication [of Yosemite] by Congress and proposed improvement by California ... furnishes an admirable example for other objects of natural curiosity and popular interest all over the Union. New York should preserve for popular use both Niagara Falls and its neighborhood, and a generous section of the famous Adirondacks, and Maine, one of her lakes and its surrounding woods.[271] Surely Bowles’ statement disclosed a profound appreciation of a growing need. He had found, as Dr. Hans Huth aptly says, “a formula not just for the protection of this or that area of interest to some group or other, but for a systematic approach to an overall system of protection of specific features of nature throughout the nation.”[272] However, one tremendously important element was still missing from the formula. It was simply a repetition of George Catlin’s proposal of 1832, in clearer terms to be sure, but still the all-important factor of bringing the program under the aegis of the federal government was lacking. This element was supplied by the Washburn-Langford-Doane party in their memorable campfire discussion at the junction of the Firehole and Gibbon rivers on September 19, 1870, when it was specifically proposed that the federal government should be induced to establish a National Park. Within less than two years the native virtue of the idea, backed by the rugged energy of its originators and others, resulted in the passage of the Yellowstone Park Act. Yellowstone, therefore, was the first federal venture in the field of protection. Hence, technically speaking, it may stand as the birthplace of the National Park Idea.[273] True, the issue of protection and conservation had a long history, but one doesn’t actually name a baby until it is born. In this light, the Yellowstone experience is the matrix in which the National Park Idea achieved existence as a new American institution.