Yellowstone Beaver tt)0 



four small ponds. Figure 45 shows how high and steep a slope the 

 beaver will denude of its aspen growth; and figure 46 tells the story 

 of the silting up of beaver ponds as a result of spring freshets and 

 summer thunder storms. 



One wonders at first how the beavers, clumsy enough on land, 

 ever reached the upper creek waters, for the high Lost Creek Fall 

 drops sheer into a deep gorge hemmed in by perpendicular cliffs. 

 But the creatures find their way to the plateau by other drainage 

 lines, doubtless from Elk Creek on the north and the headwaters 

 of some branches of Tower Creek on the south. 



Lost Lake. This is an exquisite little lake (figure 47) amid the 

 hills on the heights back of Camp Roosevelt, and readily reached by 

 a steep footpath through the lodgepole pine forest. It is long and 

 narrow, with both ends grown up to thick grass and the margins 

 dense with luxuriant yellow water lilies. Its shores pitch sharply to 

 considerable depths, soundings of 48 feet being obtained in it. It is 

 a spring-fed ravine lake, raised somewhat by the old, low beaver 

 dam near its rock-rim outlet at the margin of the plateau. There is 

 one lodge there, and beavers were noted many times swimming about 

 in the daytime. This is the happy result of its long seclusion, and 

 the animals will always be unafraid so long as people take care not 

 to disturb them. The roots of the water lilies would appear to be 

 about the only readily available food there at the present time, 

 although a few aspens have been recently cut a short distance back 

 from the outlet, but nevertheless quite a long way from the open 

 water and the lodge. There was a channel through the marsh grass 

 to the dam ; and this and other signs indicated that the lake is a way 

 station between the Elk Creek and Lost Creek works. 



The Yancey Meadows. The final result of the filling up of such 

 a pond is a beaver meadow, and one cannot find a better example of 

 this than the one near the old Yancey place (figure 48), where hay 

 is now extensively cut and stacked for the winter feed of elk and 

 buffalo, and the Rangers' horses ; and where bands of antelope l&unt 

 the margins of the broad lowland. Yet no longer ago than 1897 there 

 were ponds here occupied by an active colony of beavers. Seton 

 gives ('09, pp. 455-472) a very full description of them, with a 

 sketch map. About 1903 or 1904 the beavers abandoned the place, 

 very possibly because they had exhausted the available supply of 

 aspen, and it gradually changed to its present condition. I examined 

 the stream for traces of the old dams, and though I found some of 



