The Diaries of John Gregory Bourke Volume 4: July 3, 1880--May 22, 1881

3: Carl Schurz and Yellowstone National Park

64 Chapter 3 ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ Carl Schurz and Yellowstone National Park Carl Schurz’s tour included Yellowstone National Park. Besides Crook and Bourke, the party included Webb C. Hayes, son of President Rutherford B. Hayes, whom Crook had first met as a child when the elder Hayes served under him in the Civil War. As he grew up, Webb became a surrogate son to the childless Crooks. The general was a frequent visitor at the Hayes home in Fremont, Ohio, followed Webb’s progress through school, and took him on hunting trips. When Crook died, Webb stood with Mary Crook during the funeral.1 Bourke was impressed with the president’s son, commenting that Webb possessed “all the attributes of good companionship, with all the best qualities of manhood. He is very bright, gentle, good-humored, able to stand much fatigue and is a pretty good hunter.”2 Years later, in On the Border With Crook, he remarked with some humor on the relationship between the general and the president’s son. 1. The relationship between Crook and Webb Hayes is discussed in Robinson, General Crook. Their correspondence is preserved in the George Crook Collection in the Rutherford B. Hayes Library. 2. Bourke, Diary, 35:712. Carl Schurz and Yellowstone National Park 65 For eight or nine years Mr. Webb C. Hayes . . . hunted with Crook, and probably knows more of his encounters with ursine monsters than any living man, not excepting Tom Moore. Mr. Hayes became a renowned bear-hunter himself, and is well known in all the mountains close to the Three Tetons. In addition to being an excellent shot, he is a graceful runner; I remember seeing him make a half-mile dash down the side of a mountain with a bear cub at his heels, and the concurrence of opinion of all in camp was that the physical culture of Cornell University was a great thing.3 The trip inspired some of Bourke’s most soaring prose. He had always admired the natural wonders of the West, and Yellowstone had a particularly humbling effect on him. Whereas, in that era, many in the industrialized East believed that human technology was on the verge of overcoming nature, and solving virtually any problem, Bourke wrote that amid the mountains, meadows, forests, and rivers of the national park, “man’s impotence reveals itself and his awe-inspired soul bows down in humble reverence before his Lord and Maker.”4 The region now known as Yellowstone National Park was surveyed by an expedition under Dr. Ferdinand V. Hayden in 1871. Hayden’s enthusiastic written report, together with the works of expedition photographer William H. Jackson and painter Thomas Moran, led to the establishment of the park the following year. Yellowstone existed in a sort of limbo for decades following its establishment. There being no National Park Service at the time, the park was under the War Department, with the Army Engineers having direct responsibility. Despite this arrangement, initially it was placed under civilian superintendents. Congress, however, found this unsatisfactory, and beginning in 1886, army officers served as superintendents. The National Park Service was created in 1916, but the War Department and Engineers disputed its jurisdiction for two more years, so that it was 1918 when the park passed to civilian control.5 Even at this early stage of the park’s development, remote as it was, and with Indian outbreaks still a possibility, Superintendent 3. Bourke, On the Border, 430–31. 4. Bourke, Diary, 35:709. 5. Lamar, New Encyclopedia, 1244–45; Lee Whittlesey, Yellowstone National Park, to Charles M. Robinson III, January 2, 2008. 66 More Staff Duties Philetus Norris foresaw what it would become, and was designing his program accordingly. Already, as Bourke observed, the park was attracting tourists: Near the grand geysers, a photographer, Mr. [Henry Bird] Calfee, his [sic] pitched his tent and supplies tourists with such views as they may desire. We encountered several small parties travelling like ourselves for pleasure, but none that we knew except that of Major [William Burton] Hughes (A.D.C. to Genl. Terry.) with his wife and sister-in-law.6 August 9th . Dr. Tanner, so the telegram to-day informed us, completed his 40 days’ fast, a wonderful achievement of fortitude and endurance, which may yet prove of value to the medical profession in the treatment of obscure intestinal troubles. The report, published a short time since, of the...