Company D, Minnesota National Guard at Yancey’s Hole Hotel in Yellowstone National Park in 1893 (Frank J. Haynes, Montana Historical Society) and in 2014 as Dr. Charles Kay evaluates potential for recovery of willows browsed heavily by elk and bison (CW Collection- 2014-08-20-2512).
In what is called Yancey’s Hole today an ancient Indigenous trail through northern Yellowstone National Park follows along Lost Creek. This is a section of the traditional route followed by Shoshone and other native peoples across the northern edge of the Yellowstone Plateau. The Yellowstone River was crossed by a ford behind the hill in the background of the photograph.
Ernest Thomas Seton and other ecologists did some of North America’s earliest documented research on beavers along Lost Creek, but since the 1930s beaver numbers are very low here due to impacts on willow and aspen by high numbers of elk and bison. Yellowstone biologists now promote a model of widespread and abundant bison.
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