D.C. The reorganization forced concessionaires to make major investments just when World War I was keeping Americans closer to home. The Yellowstone Park Transportation Company, suddenly designated as the sole park transportation concessionaire, had to buy 116 motor buses. Frank J. Haynes, owner of several hotels and other businesses, had to sell them all and become the photographic concessionaire. The Yellowstone Park Hotel Company became the sole hotel concessionaire, while Wylie Permanent Camps merged with Shaw and Powell. Because cars could carry visitors much farther in a day, several of the hotels, tent camps and lunch stations were abandoned.
Concessionaires Let's take a minute to talk about concessionaires.
While they reaped big benefits as co-conductors of the region's economic engine, national events more than once took the steam from their smokestacks. Gas and tire rationing, combined with the scarcity of men, dried visitor numbers to a trickle. In 1943, only 64,000 visitors toured Yellowstone National Park, the lowest number since 1919, and down from 561,000 in 1941. Concessionaires boarded up their facilities and left them to weather the harsh elements of Yellowstone during the war years. Already crying for repairs and upgrades before the war, they were fairly screaming for attention by 1946 when 815,000 war-weary Americans swarmed into the park.