Photos of Yellowstone National Park taken in 1871 and today look incredibly similar
William Henry Jackson/Yellowstone National Park Service
In the summer of 1871, photographer William Henry Jackson set out on an expedition to document the untamed, other-worldly beauty of a region that would become the country’s first national park. At the time, Congress was reviewing legislation to establish Yellowstone National Park, but it needed convincing.
They heard accounts of the wonders explorers had seen — “spouting geysers, towering waterfalls and a huge, pristine mountain lake,” as photojournalist Bradly J. Boner told Tech Insider. But they “seemed too extraordinary and were often dismissed as campfire tales.”
Jackson returned to Capitol Hill with an exhibition of photos that diminished all doubts. Yellowstone National Park was born, much to his credit.
Boner recently returned to the Great American West to recapture Jackon’s iconic images. To celebrate the National Park Service’s 100th anniversary, we’ve published a selection here.
Boner spent three years researching surveyors’ diaries and hiking unmapped terrain in search of the locations where Jackson stood.
There have been some change of scenery since the inclusion of roads, bridges, and parking lots, which allow millions of people to experience Yellowstone annually.
But more or less, “the landscape has remained virtually untouched over almost a century and a half, save for changes wrought by the forces of nature,” Boner says.
“I felt as though I was looking at a window into the past,” Boner says, “and took great care not to move anything so that those who came after me could marvel at the same scene.”
Boner is raising funds on Kickstarter to turn his series, “Yellowstone National Park: Through the Lens of Time” into a coffee table book.
He hopes the images will drum up support for future preservation efforts, so that one day his children will enjoy the same Yellowstone he experienced.
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