Follow the yellow-painted stones

RIVERTON - A 20-ton lump of stone covered in faded yellow paint sits in the heart of Riverton City Park, unlabeled and unnoticed. Over 100 years ago, when automobiles were new and novel, a cutting-edge roadway was developed to funnel eager travelers directly through Fremont County on the way to America's best idea, Yellowstone National Park. The behemoth boulder pays homage to the days before numbered interstates and Google Maps, when a trip from Denver to Yellowstone involved an engaging Wizard of Oz-like game of "follow the yellow-painted stones."

These days, many Americans have a closer relationship with "Yellowstone" the show than Yellowstone the park. Still, over 150 years since its creation, the country's first national park continues to fuel eternal dreams of the great American road trip.

Unlike most billboard attractions, the allure of Yellowstone is genuine grandeur. There are plenty of gift shops and sideshows in the park, but they fail to meaningfully taint the scenic beauty of teeming meadows and miraculous geological anomalies. From every corner of the world, people come to see it for themselves. Naturally, every town and county along the way seeks to capitalize on the traffic.

The "Old Yellowstone Highway" is one of many historic "auto trails" originally designed and marketed to attract road trippers and boost gateway economies. Cutting a curving line across Fremont County, the route once appeared in dozens of road atlases and vacation travel guides. Carloads of folks from Colorado, east Texas, and the Delta region would cruise through Wind River Country on their way to be wowed by the Tetons and Old Faithful. Why not stop off in Riverton for a stroll down Main Street?

The human history of Yellowstone began thousands of years before the park was signed into existence by President Grant in 1872. Tukudika Native Americans continued to live in the region for decades after the park was established. They were later forcibly confined to the Wind River Reservation and incorporated with the Wind River Shoshone and Fort Hall Shoshone Bannock tribes.

Until 1877, less than 500 tourists traveled to Yellowstone each year. Most early visitors were wealthy and adventurous, arriving with heavily stocked coaches and prepared to tour in style. After the Northern Pacific Railroad approached the park's northern boundary near Gardier, Mont., in the 1880s, visitation increased dramatically. Several opulent resort hotels popped up to accommodate the traveling hordes in between five-day coach tours and bathes in the allegedly curative hot springs.

By 1915, Henry Ford's plan to install a Model T in every American garage was well underway, and Yellowstone caved to the automotive pressure. Once cars were allowed, the rough and rugged mythology of the park was freely available to anyone who could afford one. The National Park Service in its current form didn't exist yet, but the Department of Interior quickly realized that the state of the nation's muddy and disconnected auto trails was unsuitable to meet the demands generated by Yellowstone. A convention was held immediately to coordinate and promote a series of long-distance highways to the park.

Across Wyoming, towns vied for these new roads and the commerce they would bring. In 1920, most cars maxed out around 30 mph, which, combined with variable driving surfaces, slowed progress and filled motel rooms. At the time, a popular route from the Black Hills to Yellowstone dubbed "The Black and Yellow Trail" took about 22 hours. Today, people make the same journey in a day and arrive in time for dinner.

Soon after cars were allowed into Yellowstone, Fremont County benefitted from a new route called the Yellowstone Highway that followed aging rail lines northwest from Denver. Beginning as an unpaved auto trail in 1915, the immense project was mapped, maintained, and promoted by local businesses and Good Roads Booster Clubs as a scenic connector between Yellowstone, Cheyenne, Denver, and the recently designated Rocky Mountain National Park.

In Fremont County, the initial route traced a steep and rocky horse trail over Bird's Eye pass. A yellow-painted stone was placed there, just like the one that sits in City Park. Another such stone existed in Lenore near Crowheart on a stretch of road that's rarely used today.

Bird's Eye Pass in particular proved too craggy and temperamental to support year-round traffic on an aspiring world-famous auto route. Before long, Good Roads activists promoted a highway through the Wind River Canyon as a safer alternative. The project involved floods, earth slides, 450 workers, five steam shovels, deaths from premature dynamite blasts, and three new tunnels – all on a $400,000 budget. After four years, this new segment of the Yellowstone Highway opened in 1924 to a celebration of rodeos, ball games, and boxing matches – 100 years ago as of this July.

The massive monolith in City Park was installed in spring 1972 to mark Yellowstone's centennial and commemorate the Old Yellowstone Highway. Several such boulders were mined from a remote region of the park and placed statewide along various historic driving routes. True to the experience of a 1920s road trip, the Riverton rock's journey was delayed by a half-day snowstorm on Togwotee Pass and broken tire chains.

Today, Yellowstone continues to serve as the romantic terminus of interstate odysseys and bucket list adventures. In 2023, the park received 4.1 million visits – the second-highest annual total on record. Every summer, minivan convoys of wilderness-starved city dwellers cross the great divide and pass through Fremont County dreaming of glorious geysers and crystal clear hot springs. Inevitably, they stop in for a night at the Tomahawk Motor Lodge or a souvenir at the Giant Jackalope Country Store in Dubois – possibly unaware that they're participating in a procession that dates back more than a century.

Perhaps it's time to give that old boulder a fresh paint job.