Yellowstone

Journal of a Trapper

Osborne Russell

Russell's plainly told account follows his years as a fur trapper through the 1830s and 1840s, much of it spent in and around what would become Yellowstone. It stands as both a firsthand report from the height of the fur trade and an engaging record of a region few outsiders had yet seen.

John Colter: His Years in the Rockies

Burton Harris

First published in 1952, this remains the definitive biography of the first mountain man known to have entered Yellowstone country. Colter left no written account of his own, and Harris weighs the surviving facts and legend to reconstruct the life of an explorer who was, in his words, robbed of the credit he had earned.

Crazy Horse and Custer: The Parallel Lives of Two American Warriors

Stephen E. Ambrose

On the morning of June 25, 1876, six hundred eleven men of the United States Seventh Cavalry rode toward the Little Bighorn River in Montana Territory, where three thousand Lakota and Cheyenne warriors waited. Ambrose traces the parallel lives of George Armstrong Custer and Crazy Horse toward that single collision, and the struggle between two nations for the open prairie that surrounded it.

Wyoming Range War

John W. Davis

Davis reconstructs the West's most notorious range war, a conflict between cattle ranchers and the men branded as rustlers that ended in a three day siege at the TA Ranch. He argues that the accepted story does not hold, and that many of the so-called rustlers were legitimate homesteaders caught in a fight over land and power.

The Boy Who Became Buffalo Bill

Andrea Warren

Long before he became the greatest entertainer of his era, the founder and star of a show built on cowboys, sharpshooters, and trick riders, Buffalo Bill was simply Billy Cody, a boy who had to grow up quickly. Warren traces that early chapter, the childhood behind the icon.

Saving Yellowstone

Megan Kate Nelson

Nelson tells the story of how Yellowstone became the world's first national park, set against the upheaval and racial violence of the Reconstruction era. Her account places the park's founding within a much larger national reckoning, one rarely told alongside it.

The National Parks: America's Best Idea

Dayton Duncan and Ken Burns

Duncan and Burns trace the origin of the national park idea, from the first sighting of the Yosemite Valley by white explorers in 1851 through the creation of Yellowstone as the world's first national park in 1872. Their account follows the system as it grew to nearly four hundred sites and eighty four million acres, a companion to the acclaimed documentary series.

The Wilderness Warrior

Douglas Brinkley

Between 1901 and 1909, Theodore Roosevelt set aside more than two hundred thirty million acres of wild land, making conservation a national cause. Drawing on previously unpublished material, Brinkley delivers an unmatched portrait of the president who became known as its naturalist champion.

Wilderness and the American Mind

Roderick Frazier Nash and Char Miller

This classic examines how American attitudes toward wilderness and the natural world have shifted over time, with chapters on Henry David Thoreau, John Muir, and Aldo Leopold. Nash and Miller also trace the role wilderness played in westward expansion and in the movement to preserve it.

Decade of the Wolf: Returning the Wild to Yellowstone

Douglas Smith and Gary Ferguson

Biologist Douglas Smith, who led the Yellowstone Wolf Recovery Project, and nature writer Gary Ferguson look back on the first ten years after wolves were reintroduced to the park. Their account traces how one decision reshaped an entire ecosystem.

Ranger Confidential: Living, Working and Dying in the National Parks

Andrea Lankford

For twelve years, Lankford worked as a ranger in some of the country's largest and most demanding parks, including Yellowstone, Yosemite, and the Grand Canyon. Her account is candid and often funny, tracing the line she had to walk between protecting the park from its visitors, its visitors from the park, and its visitors from each other.

Mountain Time: A Yellowstone Memoir

Paul Schullery

A former ranger, Schullery writes with depth and quiet grace about the natural history of Yellowstone, its wildlife, and the rangers and visitors who pass through it. This collection of essays has become a classic among those who know the park well.

Where the Bluebird Sings to the Lemonade Springs

Wallace Stegner

This collection gathers seventeen essays from the Pulitzer Prize winning writer on the American West, its landscapes, its shifting identity, and the tension between its beauty and its fragility. Stegner remains one of the clearest voices on what the region has been and what it stands to lose.

Close Range: Wyoming Stories

Annie Proulx

Proulx's characters carry the loneliness and hard beauty of Wyoming through this collection of short fiction, which includes the story that became the film Brokeback Mountain. Each piece is rooted in the same wild, unforgiving landscape that surrounds Yellowstone.

The Field Guide to Yellowstone and Grand Teton National Parks

Kurt F. Johnson

Written by a local wildlife biologist and eco tour guide, this identification guide pairs twelve hundred color photographs with detailed notes on the wildlife of Yellowstone and Grand Teton. It is a thorough companion for anyone hoping to recognize what they are seeing in the field.

Yellowstone Wildlife

Paul A. Johnsgard and Thomas D. Mangelsen

This volume catalogs the birds, mammals, fish, amphibians, and reptiles that make up Yellowstone's wildlife, paired with the work of renowned nature photographer Thomas Mangelsen. It offers a full picture of the ecosystem beyond the animals most visitors expect to see.

Spectacular Yellowstone and Grand Teton National Parks

Charles Preston and Jim Robbins

Three hundred color photographs, including sweeping panoramic spreads, bring the landscapes of Yellowstone and Grand Teton to life in this collection. Preston and Robbins capture the scale of both parks in a way that rewards slow, careful looking.