"For an American, a visit to a national park in another country can be disorienting. Where are the Winnebagos? The air-conditioned visitor center? The paved roads?

If you venture off the main highway in search of a park that is clearly marked on the map, in a place like, say, Baja Mexico, you might find that the paved road simply ends with a bump, leaving you on an unmarked dirt track with potholes the size of dinosaur footprints. That’s how you know you’re in the park: when all traces of civilization, and in some cases law and order, disappear.

Such was the state of Yellowstone National Park circa 1872, the year that great radical socialist Ulysses S. Grant signed the law protecting it forever from the forces of mining, logging and settlement that were sweeping over the West. Almost immediately, the first two parties of tourists entered the new park — and in short order, at the hands of the last roaming bands of Nez Perce, they learned some hard lessons about its painful prehistory.

The curious creation myth of Yellowstone has always held that this ancient volcanic caldera — larger than Rhode Island or Delaware — was ignored or avoided by native people. Its history, thus, lacks the taint of blood that soaked so much of the rest of the West. It wasn’t “taken” from anyone. "

Get the Story:
Review: “Empire of Shadows: The Epic Story of Yellowstone” by George Black (The Washington Post 4/13)