Last updated: April 5, 2021
Place
Guardhouse (1891)
NPS
Quick Facts
Location:
Mammoth Hot Springs Area
Significance:
The original guardhouse for Fort Yellowstone, built in 1891
Designation:
Part of the Fort Yellowstone National Historic District
OPEN TO PUBLIC:
No
The guardhouse, completed in 1891, was one of the first buildings of Fort Yellowstone. It could hold 15 prisoners and 10 guards. Every visitor had to check in at the building after entering the park from Gardiner, Montana. A new guardhouse was built in 1911.
The most persistent menace to Yellowstone came from poachers, whose activities threatened to exterminate animals such as bison.
Any poachers or tourists caught committing a serious violation were marched to Fort Yellowstone on foot, escorted by mounted soldiers. Their possessions were often left at a different entrance so that the criminal had to travel around the outside of the park to retrieve their belongings.
New Laws
In 1894, soldiers arrested a man named Ed Howell for slaughtering bison in Pelican Valley. The maximum sentence possible was banishment from the park.
Emerson Hough, a well-known journalist, was present and wired his report to Forest & Stream, a popular magazine of the time. Its editor, renowned naturalist George Bird Grinnell, helped create a national outcry.
Within two months, Congress passed the National Park Protection Act, which increased the Army's authority for protecting park treasures. This law is known as the Lacey Act, and is the first of two laws with this name. Ed Howell was the first person arrested and punished under the new act.