The Bridgeport evening farmer., 1912-02-23

lowstone National Park-the
 greatest playground of the American people-is in winter This is scarcely conceivable. for in summer 4o,o0o visitors now find 1t one of the easiest places to reach and to travel through
 Lieutenant Frederick Schwatlza made an attempt to explore the park in January nearly twenty-fiv years ago. He had returned not long before from an expedition in search of Sir John FrankIin's party that had perish ed in the arctic regions. Before that he had been on a 5000 mile sledge Journey in the frozen north and had suffered terrible hardships. On his trip into the Yellowstone Park Lieutenant Schwatka was accompanied by a large, well-organized party. They travelled on Norwegian skis and Canadian web enowshoes; but the snow was 90 light that 1t would not support them, and their toboggans were exceedingly dim cult to draw. It took them three days to cover twenty miles. Lieutenant Schwatka. inured as he was to such hardshfps, fell i'll and was unable to proceed. He and all the rest of the party but four of the sturdiest men turned back The photographer. F. Jay Haynes; Edward Wilson. a govern ment scout, and two others kept on. 4l COOh ELSAn LWSAIy-aII1G u6yS to make the circuit of the park, 200 miles. The thermometer ranged between 40 and 50 degrees below zero most of the time. and the adventure nearly cost them their lives
 Winter Population of the "PIaysround."
 The total winter population Of the park is usually between four and five hundred people These include three troops of cavalry. The cavalry can use their horses only during the summer months During the winter they are stabled at Fort Yellowstone. The stage horses are driven down to the low lands, miles away, when the tourist season is over. and graze in the shell tered valleys there until the snows melt
 In the great hotels that are thronged during the tourist season live only the caretakers, generally two in each place, a man and his wife. The first blizzard isoIates from the world outside every body in this great national domain that has an area of S.312 square miles. No valley within it's limits has an elevation of less than 5000 feet, while many of the mountain peaks within and near the Park rise from 10000 to 14.o0o feet above sea level Yellowstone Lake 15 by 20 miles in size, is the largest body of water in America at that alti- EuQes ts fA1- IeeL aDOVe the sea. On the summit of the range, few miles south of Yellowstone Lake, is Two Ocean Pond. a small lake with two outlets. one into the Atlantic through the Yel- 1owstone and Missouri rivers. the oth- CT into the Pacific through the Snake river, a branch of the Columbia The Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone, ten miles long, has an average depth of 1,2oo feet. and Is the most brilliantly cnInred IandaCanR in RrfaTanPa R11ff n winter everything Is bIanketed with snow eight to ten feet deep. All is ice- bound except the more than half a hun dred great geysers that throw their columns of boiling water hundreds of feet in the air. almost as little seen by humankind as- when they began their spoutings ages ago.
 From December to March the en- forced dweIlers in the Park are nearly as much cut off from the world as though they were penned in by the Po- lar ice. Of course the telephone and the telegraph bring them scraps of news from the outer world. but the only way of getting about is on snow shoes or skis. Even then the dis tances between the places where the people live are so great and the ways so dangerous that few venture forth Only the Government scouts, whose duty it is to look after the wild life in the Park and see that it is not molested by poachers. get out at all. The rest of the people there are like the bears they hibernate until Spring. An ann pie supply of fuel and provisions Is laid in before the first snowstorrns be- gin to sweep over the Continental Di- vide. and there is little to do until the sun swings northward and the snows melt
 Building a Hotel Amid Arctic Tenn
 perature.
 Despite the arctic rigors of this re- zion, however. 250 men have been fighting the cold there this winter completing the fifth of the big hotels that are the halting places of tourists in this summer playground that be- longs to the people of the United States. The first order prepared on the kitchen ranges of this new hostelry, which stands on the brink of the great precipice down which roars endlessly the mighty cataract of the Yellowstone. --a= far nails. Nails pig and little. brads