The daily enterprise. [volume] (Livingston, Mont.) 1883-1884, 1883-10-27
National Park boundaries.

L
Under the above title the following arti
Gle appeared in the Philadelphia Press O.
the 10Th inst:
| notice in letter from the Yellow.
stone Park, published in your issue of the
30th ult., a series of statements credited
to Mr.. Conger, superintendent Of the Vel
lowstone Park, which are extraordinary
to say the least. They are all contained
in one brief paragraph, to-wit: 1.-The
boundaries of the National, Park are, as
yet, underlined; that no Typographical map
has ever been made of it; that the dis
tances between the points of interest are
mere guess work, and that the square of
territory indicated upon the map of the
United States is meaningless, the act of
congress creating the park having omitted
to state the number of acres or miles, or
the direction OF the boundaries
Every one of the statements in this par
agraph is wholly untrue. The act Of con-
gress creating the park defines its eastern
and western limits as meridians-t east
ern being ten miles east of the eastern ex-
tremity of Yellowstone Lake, the western
fifteen miles west of Madison (Sho
shone) Lake, while the northern and south
ern boundaries are defined as parallels,
the former passing through the mouth of
GARDENERS river, the latter ten miles south
of the southern extremity of Yellowstone
Lake. 1t is very possible that Mr.. Con-
gers education has not been carried to
that extent to enable him, to understand
what parallel or meridian is; but he
should not be allowed to impose his igno-
rance upon your readers. 1t is true that
the act of congress in question did not
state the number of acres or square miles
comprising this reservation, for tile reason
that it was unable to do so at that time
with any approach to accuracy. This area
has, however, since been determined very
closely, and, for the benefit of Mr.. Conger,
and those of your readers upon whom he
has imposed, would say that it is 1912
square miles. MIR. Conger complains that
no Typographical map has yet been made
of the park and that, cnse luently, dis
tances can only be roughly approximated.
On the contrary, the park has been, in the
last thirteen years, the most mapped sec
ton of the whole United States. From
the time of the Washburne expedition, in
1870, up to the present, a dozen expedi-
tions and surveys have traversed 1t, each
one publishing either a complete map
of the Park, or map OF such per-
tons as were visited. as a result Of its
labors. It is fashionable to complain of
the poverty of the maps of this country,
but, if Mr.. Conger aspiresS to figure in
this connection he should have selected
more promising subject. can recall, at
this moment, no fewer than nine maps of
the Park, or of considerable portions of
it, made during the past thirteen years.
The early maps are of course to greater
or less extent faulty-generally greater
rather than less. By far the best map of
the Park is that of the United States Geo
logical and Geographical Survey of the
territories, under DR.. F. Y. Hayden, the
field work of which was done in 1878. A
small edition of this map was published
in 1879. 1t is ON the scale of two miles
to an inch, in contour lines,approximately
200 feet apart. It is. perhaps, not too
much to claim for this map that distances
between points Of interest can he meas
ured with some approach to accuracy.
II. G..
WASHINGTON, Oct 10, 1888.