About the Book
The experience of the U.S. Army soldiers who were responsible for the protection of Yellowstone Park from 1886-1918.
Book Synopsis
When, in 1883, Congress charged the US Army with managing Yellowstone National Park, soldiers encountered a new sort of hostility: work they were untrained for, in a daunting physical and social environment where they weren't particularly welcome. When they departed in 1918, America had a new sort of serviceman: the National Park Service Ranger. From the creation of Yellowstone National Park to the conclusion of the army's superintendence, Watching over Yellowstone tells the boots-on-the-ground story of the US troops charged with imposing order on man and nature in Americaâ (TM)s first national park.
Yellowstone National Park had been created only fourteen years before Captain Moses Harris arrived at Mammoth Hot Springs with his company, Troop M of the First United States Cavalry, in August of 1886. And in those years, the underfunded, poorly supervised park had been visited freely by over-eager tourists, vandals, and poachers. Thomas C. Rust describes the task confronting Congress, military superintendents, and the common soldiers as the ever-increasing number of tourists, commercial interests, and politics stained the unruly park. At a time when the army was already undergoing a great transformation, the common soldiers were now struggling with unusual duties in unfamiliar terrain, often in unaccustomed proximity to the social elite who dominated the tourist class--fertile if uncertain ground for both the failures and the successes that eventually shaped the National Park Service's ranger corps. What this meant for the average soldier emerges from the materials Rust consults: orders, circulars, inspection reports, court-martial cases, civilian accounts, and evidence from excavated soldier stations in the park. A nuanced social history from a rare ground-level perspective, his book captures an extraordinary moment in the story of America's military and its national parks.
Review Quotes
"Rust skillfully develop[s] an entertaining and fruitful narrative that merits attention from historians interested in the army, social history, the Gilded Age and Progresssive Era, law enforcement, and conservation."--American Historical Review
"Provides necessary and rare insight into the lives of soldiers serving in the Old Army and the state of an institution on the precipice of great change."--Army History
"Rust offers several cogent observations about the U.S. Army and the NPS, ideas that can contribute to telling new stories about each agency. They can speak to a new generation of soldiers and rangers whose service as guardians of our heritage is paramount."--New Mexico Historical Review
"A valuable contribution to little-known but important aspects of America's cultural and military histories."--On Point
"Rust's examination of average soldiers' perspectives on their unusual duties in Yellowstone is unique in national park and military history."--Journal of Arizona History
"Rust enriches this body of literature by specifically addressing the experiences of the soldiers on the ground in Yellowstone."--Journal of Interdisciplinary History
"An enjoyable read."--Montana the Magazine of Western History
"An excellent work that gives a prominent overview of the origins of the National Park Service at Yellowstone."--South Dakota History
"Replete with captivating photographs of the park and the soldiers stationed there. This is a study destined to be of interest and value not only to military historians but also to public historians interested in the National Park Service."--Journal of Military History
"A well-researched and lucidly written account of a little-known episode in the park's history. Scholars interested in Yellowstone's complex story will not want to go without it."--H-Net Reviews
"The protection that the US Army provided to the nation's emerging national parks system is a facet of the United States' past that remains little known even among professional historians. Rust's Watching over Yellowstone not only explains to readers how such a development came to pass in the divided government of the 1880s but also serves as the most detailed account of soldiers' lives and service as the guardians of Yellowstone National Park."--Kevin Adams, associate professor of history, Kent State University
"A fascinating account of how soldiers struggled with an unconventional assignment while laying a solid foundation for the National Park Service that replaced them. Watching over Yellowstone is an important contribution to military history and the history of our national parks."--Harvey Meyerson, author of Nature's Army: When Soldiers Fought for Yosemite
"Nineteenth-century US Army soldiers were not well prepared or motivated to serve as park rangers. Thomas Rust provides a rare case study of the diversity of soldiers' motives and experiences in the West after the Indian wars. The stories are engaging, the evidence is persuasive, and Rust effectively engages questions of social class in soldiers' relations with civilians, linking the challenges they faced to the eventual civilianization of the park police."--Samuel J. Watson, author of Peacekeepers and Conquerors: The Army Officer Corps on the American Frontier, 1821-1846
