YELLOWSTONE PARK AS A NATIONAL FISHING 
RESORT. 
(Illustrated by Lantern Slides.) 
BY A. H. DINSMORE. 
An outline of the lecture is as follows: 
In 1872 Congress passed a bill setting apart a great volcanic 
plateau locked away in the heart of the Rocky Mountains, and 
comprising an area of more than 3,500 square miles, as a 
“public park and pleasure ground for benefit and enjoyment of 
the people.” Because the greater part of its surface is drained 
by the Yellowstone River, this reservation has been called The 
Yellowstone National Park. 
Yellowstone Park is most widely known as a region of 
strange natural phenomena and beautiful mountain and canyon 
scenery. It was for the preservation of these features alone 
that Congress was induced to exempt this vast region from 
settlement. But public measures, good or bad, seldom fail to 
reach in their ultimate results far beyond the conception of the 
assemblies which pass them. And so Yellowstone Park has 
become famous for many things of which its most enthusiatic 
advocate never dreamed. Thus, as the nucleus of a great tim- 
ber reserve, its magnificent forests protect the sources of three 
of the most important rivers of the North American Continent, 
—the Missouri, the Columbia, and the Colorado of the west. 
This one feature, as a safeguard from flood and a potent factor 
in the great problem of irrigation, is alone worth to the Ameri- 
can people many times the cost of its maintenance. 
Then, as a great natural game reserve it is of inestimable 
worth for its preservation of the wild life of the west. Here all 
the animals indigenous to the Rocky Mountain region find an 
asylum where, unmolested by the hand of man, they may roam 
at will. And though elsewhere many species have already be- 
come rare or ceased entirely to exist, in the Park they are as 
abundant as ever and so tame as to be continually under the 
observation of the tourist. 
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