old horse-drawn stage-coach from its last stand in
the United States; times when a tour of the Yellowstone meant six and a
half days of slow, dusty travel, starting early and arriving late, with
a few minutes or hours at each "sight" for the soiled and exhausted
traveller to gape in ignorant wonder, watch in hand.

To-day one travels swiftly and comfortably in entire leisure, stopping
at hotels or camps as he pleases, and staying at each as long as he
likes. The runs between the lingering places are now a pleasure. If
hurried, one can now accomplish the stage-coach trip of the past in two
days, while the old six and a half days now means a leisurely and
delightful visit.

With the new order of travel began a new conception of the
Yellowstone's public usefulness. It ceased to be a museum of wonders and
began to be a summer pleasure-ground. Instead of the fast
automobile-stage decreasing the average length of visit, the new idea
which it embodied has lengthened it. This new idea is a natural
evolution which began with the automobile and spread rapidly. The
railroads had been bringing tourists principally on transcontinental
stop-overs. Automobiles brought people who came really to see the
Yellowstone, who stayed weeks at public camps to see it, or who brought
outfits and camped out among its spectacles. The first Ford which
entered the park on the morning of August 1, 1915, the day when private
cars were first admitted, so loaded with tenting and cooking utensils
that the occupants scarcely could be seen, was the herald of the new and
greater Yellowstone. Those who laughed and those who groaned at sight of
it, and there were both, were no seers; for that minute Yellowstone
entered upon her destiny.

The road scheme is simple and effective. From each entrance a road leads
into an oblong loop road enclosing the centre of the park and touching
the principal points of scenic interest. This loop is connected across
the middle for convenience. From it several short roads push out to
special spectacles, and a long road follows Lamar Creek through a
northeastern entrance to a mining town which has no other means of
communication with the world outside. This is the road to Specimen
Ridge with its thirteen engulfed forests, to the buffalo range, and,
outside the park boundaries, to the Grasshopper Glacier, in whose glassy
embrace may be seen millions of grasshoppers which have lain in very
cold storage indeed from an age before