• Students at South Peak

    Marsh - Billings - Rockefeller

    National Historical Park Vermont

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  • June 18-26 Road Maintenance Work Ongoing in Park

    During the period of June 18th - June 26th road maintenance (gravel and grading) work will be taking place in the park in various locations. Large trucks may be present on the roads and trails (some open hours and after hours). Please use caution.

Rick Bass and the Yaak Valley Forest Council

A wide blue river courses over and around rocks, lined on both banks by vibrant evergreens and the occasional yellow-leaved deciduous tree.

NPS Photo

"The future's so random, and so mobile, there's no way you're going to get to your vision of what you want your community to be, just by chance alone. I really believe you have to let people know, to use your voice, to say, "this is what I like about my place, I want to keep it this way, this is what I think can be improved, this is what I disapprove of." That's the only way you can have a part in shaping the future." Rick Bass
 
A portrait of a brown-haired man in a white button-down shirt, hands in his pockets.

NPS Photo

Rick Bass is a writer who lives with his family in northwestern Montana's Yaak Valley. The valley has been described as a "Noah's Ark of Diversity," with mountain lions, moose, elk, bobcats, grizzly and black bears, lynx and wolverines. Almost all of the Yaak Valley is in the Kootenai National Forest. Rick works with his neighbors on the Yaak Valley Forest Council to support a local and sustainable forest-based economy, and to help protect the last roadless areas on the public wildland in northwestern Montana.
 
Sunlight and shadows play amongst tall evergreens; some are illuminated by the sun, while some are in darkness.

NPS Photo

The Yaak Council has been described by Rick as a mix of valley residents, including "hunting and fishing guides, bartenders, massage therapists, road builders/heavy construction operators, writers, seamstresses, painters, construction workers, nurses, teachers, loggers, photographers, electricians and carpenters."
  • Read Rick's transcript Read Rick's transcript

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  • Listen to Rick Bass speak Listen to Rick Bass speak

    (mp3 - 409kb - 2 min 19 sec) Read More

Did You Know?

Black and white Carleton Watkins photograph, showing Yosemite's massive granite Cathedral Rock. Billings Family Archives.

In the early 1860s Vermonter Frederick Billings, then living in California, purchased and sent photographs of Yosemite Valley to influential eastern friends to make the case for its preservation. You can see these photographs, and paintings of Yosemite, at Marsh-Billings-Rockefeller NHP.