Revisiting Yellowstone National Park

Hello ! In a few weeks I will return to Yellowstone National Park for the first time since I wrote The Yellowstone, Forever! in 1998.  I had intended to write a historical biography of geologist Ferdinand V. Hayden, our only government geologist, but someone else was ahead of me. Instead, I considered what had happened when Hayden, artist Thomas Moran, and photographer William H. Jackson came together at one time in the Yellowstone--America ended up with our first national park!
I gues I'm kind of a research nut, because I discovered that in addition to those three, frontiersman Nathaniel Langford and private banker and promoter Jay Cooke rounded out the five men who helped to establish the park. I loved learning about Cooke: he was the man who first promoted the use of War Bonds.  During the Civil War he sold $800 million dollars to the public and probably saved the Union's butt in so doing. So, no Jay Cooke, no national park. I'll stay focused on Yellowstone for the next couple of weeks. In the meantime, you can find The Yellowstone, Forever! in print at my website (daviddelo.com) as well as an e-book @ http://smashwords.com/profile/view/bookswriter22.