The Story of Man in Yellowstone, by Merrill D. Beal

MOUNTAIN WEST. 
History. 

We were outbid at an auction on a signed first edition of Merrill D. Beal’s 1949, thoroughly considered, yet highly readable, study of America’s first national park. So impressed with the volume, one that Regionals staff had not heard of, we went out and found another first edition, unsigned, for a fraction of the cost of our final bid, to include in our list here … Merrill Beal was Mountain West through and through. Born a Mormon in Utah in the late 19th century, his early years coincided with the closing of the frontier and tragic removal of what free bands of Indians remained to scraps of unwanted land, their boundaries highly policed. After serving in the Marines, Beal wrapped an undergraduate degree from the University of Utah around a many-year long mission for the Church of Latter Day Saints; and over the next two decades took a scholarly course, collecting a masters from Cal-Berkeley, a PhD from Washington State, before settling in as a professor at Idaho State. His book subjects were as thoroughly “west” as he was, writing studies on his adopted home state, the Grand Canyon, and a bio on the great, and ultimately tragic figure, Chief Joseph of the Nez Perce. But “Yellowstone” was his first book. From the back cover: “(Dr. Beal) provides exciting reading because of the many sprightly incidents included.” Though Beal tells the story, not unsurprisingly, from a thoroughly white man’s perspective, and at that giving significant air-time to “discoverers” and the early frontiersmen trodding a “trackless” country, he nonetheless includes full chapters on the native presence in, and relationship to this awe-inspiring—in spots very weird—plot of Earth. What must the earliest wanderers have thought of the bubbling hydrothermals and venting geysers of this place? Including a thorough step-through to Yellowstone becoming America’s first national park in 1872 and the early decades of NPS administration, Beal added this early edition to a now well documented canon. [Condition: Despite a two-pointed dent in the lower left of the front cover (our guess is a blunt heavy object was dropped on it at some point), the dust-jacket shows only slight wear on the spine edge, the front cover itself still sheen, the volume having been well-stored. The interior pages are in near perfect shape, only slight discoloration without “foxing” on the edges. This volume is in great shape for 75 years old.] 

Condition: Used Very Good. 
Nonfiction / History. 
Merrill D. Beal. 
The Caxton Printers. Ltd., 1949. 
Hardcover, (First Edition) 320 pgs, 5.5 x 7.75"