About this time Norris left the Park service, but before doing so he had completed and occupied a unique structure on Capitol Hill, called Fort Yellowstone. It was a blockhouse of hewn timber with a balcony and three wings, surmounted by a gun turret. He wanted to be prepared for the next Indian attack, while the problems actually confronting the Park officials were of quite a different character. Yellowstone was still a wilderness, and many visitors would not endure restraints. In 1883 Secretary of the Interior Hoke Smith caught two hundred trout in one day, and the next year Secretary of War Dan Lamont only caught fifty-three![297] [Illustration: Old Fort Yellowstone.] In 1882 Patrick A. Conger, of Iowa, succeeded Norris as superintendent. His administration was weak and vacillating in practically every respect. Scarcely anything was improved, but all difficulties were aggravated. Vandalism, forest fires, and general mismanagement were added to the problem of vanishing wild life. John S. Crosby, Governor of Montana, wrote a scathing denunciation of the Park officials to the Secretary of the Interior, Henry M. Teller.[298] This official contemplated the leasing of considerable portions of the Park to responsible persons in the hope that they would, through self-interest, give the protection which the government had failed to provide.[299] While Montana’s governor complained and the Secretary hesitated Wyoming territorial officials took action. The Wyoming legislature intervened by providing stringent measures for the protection of timber, game, fish, and natural curiosities of the Park. A jail was erected, and the territorial officials got ready for business. Cowboy type-cast officers had a lively time enforcing regulations and levying fines for personal emolument upon strangers toward whom they felt a natural suspicion.[300] Vexatious arrests, made under the sweeping provisions of the act, defeated the purpose of the Park “as a pleasuring ground for the people.” Citizens questioned the right of a territory to exercise criminal jurisdiction and judicial powers in a federal reservation. The act was repealed in 1886, but the effect was to leave the Park in a worse plight than ever before. As it became generally known that the superintendent had no support beyond the rules of the department and their own personal force, the rules and regulations were ignored, while outlaws and vagabonds from the surrounding region made the nation’s pleasure ground a place of refuge. The hotels were frequented by gamblers and adventurers, who preyed upon the unwary tourist, while forest fires, originating mysteriously in remote and inaccessible places, raged unchecked.[301]