Merrill, Marlene Deahl, ed. Seeing Yellowstone in 1871.

MERRILL, Marlene Deahl, ed. Seeing Yellowstone in 1871. Univ. of Nebraska, Bison Press. 85p. illus, notes, bibliog, c2005. 0-8032-8787-9. $19.95. SA

This title officially is for those folks who like journals of early Western explorers, but mostly just for those who love Yellowstone Park in its own right. There are numerous coffee table books about the beauties and genuine splendor of our best-known National Park, but not very many on how that singular land looked to the first whites to traverse it with packhorse and tent.

Essentially, the book consists of four lengthy and descriptive letters written by Albert Peale, a geologist who accompanied Ferdinand Hayden's fifth official survey of the Utah, Idaho and Montana territories in 1871. This trek, the most famous of Hayden's explorations, is best known as the Hayden Survey, and Peale's descriptions are detailed, readable, and witty. A large part of the expedition's fame came from its members, who included the Hudson River School artist Thomas Moran and photographer William Henry Jackson. The official artist of the expedition, Henry Wood Elliott, was no mean draftsman himself, and his precise sketches added greatly to the expedition's scientific value. In truth, the Hayden Survey is already well known to those who love the Old West. Editor Marlene Merrill has herself published a scholarly work on the subject, and there are others. But 1871 was not really so long ago, and today's readers ought to know what things were like when, to most folks, Yellowstone might as well have been on the Moon.

The drawings, paintings, color sketches, and photographs are a huge part of this book, but the YA or adult reader will enjoy the stories of wild animal encounters, Indian scares, and the vigorous outdoor experience of another era. Aficionados of the modern Yellowstone Park will love comparing the trail sketches of various scenes with their modern counterparts. Raymond Puffer, Ph.D., Historian, Edwards AFB, Lancaster, CA

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