Yellowstone National Park Art 1871
 
A young bison calf (Red Dog) is listening to a welcoming flute serenade.
 
This is an artistic series (early hand-colored photograph) of what it may have been like in 1871, the year before Yellowstone became a National Park.
 
What was it like one year before Yellowstone National Park was designated?  The Hayden Geological Survey of 1871 explored the region of northwestern Wyoming that later became Yellowstone National Park in 1872.
 
If we let our imagination run wild, we can only imagine what was seen during the first federally funded, geological survey to explore and further document features in the region - which eventually became Yellowstone National Park.
 
Nathaniel P. Langford, the first park superintendent and a member of the Washburn-Langford-Doane Expedition which explored the park in 1870 and 1871. 
 
This old photographic image may once have been part of the fascinating daily record of Ferdinand Hayden’s historic 1871 scientific expedition through Utah, Idaho, and Montana Territories to the Yellowstone Basin.
 
The early expeditions through (what we now call) Yellowstone quickly led Congress to establish Yellowstone as the world’s first national park. There were so many early scientific discoveries, the expedition is famous for producing the earliest on-site images of Yellowstone, by its guest artist, Thomas Moran and photographer, William Henry Jackson.