Yellowstone National Park, illustration by Heinrich Berann
Featured on this Yellowstone Forever unused postcard above is an aerial view illustration by Heinrich Berann. The number 43 appears on the center line on the reverse. There is also a blurb on the reverse at the upper left corner: “Yellowstone—the world’s first national park—encompasses an area of over 2.2 million acres and is larger than Rhode Island and Delaware combined. The park’s landscape is also diverse, from the forest and rolling hillsides surrounding Reese Creek at the park’s lowest point at 5,282 feet to the mountainous terrain of its highest point of 11,358 at Eagle Peak.”
Yellowstone National Park is such a fascinating and amazing place. The overview view on the card helps to show how vast and varied the area the park encompasses. There are animals such as bison, deer, elk, moose, antelope, bears, wolves, coyotes, cougars, fish, reptiles, amphibians and many different kinds of birds. The landscape is almost surreal with mountains, geysers, boiling mud pots, rivers, meadows with hundreds of flowers, and forests.
This second unused postcard is also a Yellowstone Forever product. It has a collection of 10 acid free stickers and are "perfect for Scrapbooking" according to the blurb at the upper left on the reverse. From the left top row: Canary Spring, American Bison, Emerald Pool, Black Sand Basin. Middle row: Wolf, Grand Prismatic Spring, American Grizzly Bear. Bottom row: Castle Geyser, Cow Elk with Calf, and Lower Falls of the Yellowstone (river). The stickers were produced by Pigment & Hue, Inc.
It is not possible to see everything in the park on one trip there. On a previous visit we saw entirely different parts of this huge park. This time we had opportunities to make multiple trips into the park during our 10-day stay as part of an extended family gathering. Bob and I probably had more ventures into the park than most of the rest of the group since we were interested in the park itself rather than shopping or exploring neighboring areas. Although, as previously noted, we also went with the group to visit Bear World, and spent part of one day in the town of West Yellowstone visiting the Bear & Wolf Museum as well as getting a few postcards and souvenirs.
As expected, there were many people and lots of cars in the park. Huge crowds waited for Old Faithful to erupt. Boardwalks around geyser basins were crowded too. We were stopped more than once by “bison (or buffalo) jams” as the animals lumbered across the roadway seemingly uncaring of cars or gawking people with cameras. Once three bison mamas, each with a calf, started across right in front of our car. One of the babies decided to dance around unpredictably in the roadway, darting in and out of road and the forest alongside the road. We did not dare to drive forward until it crossed over to join its friends and then the mother ambled slowly after once the dance was done.
Some days there were long lines of cars at the entry gate. Thankfully there is a separate gate for people with National Park passes, so we could get through quickly and did not have to pay an additional fee. On the day we carpooled as a group to the park, each car had at least one person with a pass making it much easier and less expensive than it could have been otherwise.
The park spans the northwest corner of Wyoming and extends into Montana and Idaho. The 42nd U.S. Congress established the Yellowstone National Park Protection Act which was signed into law by President Ulysses S. Grant in 1872. The park became a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1978. “It is the largest remaining nearly intact ecosystem in the Earth’s northern temperate zone.” It is believed that Native Americans lived in the Yellowstone region for more than 11,000 years.
For more information, see:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yellowstone_National_Park
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