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an Arkansas hot springs reserved as "Hot Springs National
Reservation." Although small and heavily developed, it was the
first instance of the federal government recognizing the recreational value of a natural object and using the adjective "national"
in this regard.8 In 1858 Henry David Thoreau put together both
the concept and the adjective. Concluding a description in
Atlantic Monthly of a trip to Maine, Thoreau advocated the
establishment by the United States government of "national
"9
preserves.
Seven years later the movement that led to Yellowstone began
under bizarre circumstances. An October blizzard, howling
across western Montana, forced a group of travelers to take
refuge at the old St. Peter's Mission near the mouth of the Sun
River. Among those snowbound was the Acting Territorial Governor of Montana, Thomas Francis Meagher, and a young
lawyer, important to later Yellowstone history, named Cornelius
Hedges. Their host at the mission was a Belgian-born Jesuit
priest, Father Francis Xavier Kuppens. In the spring of that year,
1865, Kuppens traveled into the Yellowstone country with Piegan Indians Guides. His conversation around the fire in October
was full of the wonders he had seen. Meagher listened, fascinated, and had a proposal. Father Kuppens' account of the conversation, written years later, notes: "General Meagher said if
things were as described the government ought to reserve the
territory for a national park." 1
If this is a direct quote by Kuppens of Meagher's 1865 stateWildest Tribes in North America 1832-1839 (2 vols., London, 1880), I, p. 295.
Catlin's statement is reprinted in Roderick Nash, ed., The American Environment:
Readings in the History of Conservation (rev. ed., Reading, Mass., 1976), p. 9. For
a fuller discussion of Catlin's concept see Roderick Nash, Wilderness and the
American Mind (rev. ed., New Haven, Conn., 1973), pp. 100-101.
8U.S., Statutes at Large, 4, p. 505; Ise, National Park Policy, pp. 13, 244-45.
9Henry David Thoreau, "Chesuncook," Atlantic Monthly, II (1858), p. 317.
10Francis X. Kuppens, "The Origin of the Yellowstone National Park," The
Woodstock Letters, 26 (1897), p. 401. The document is also published in Jesuit
Bulletin, 41 (1971), p. 6 ff. For a discussion of the document and the incident see
Aubrey L. Haines, Yellowstone National Park: Its Exploration and Establishment
(Washington, D.C., 1974), pp. 32-33, 45; Haines, The Yellowstone Story: A History
of our First National Park (2 vols., Denver, 1977), I, pp. 89-90; and Richard A.
Barlett, Nature's Yellowstone (Albuquerque, N.M., 1974), pp. 144-147.
