Yellowstone National Park

An elk at Mammoth Hot Springs

In the summer of 1883, thirty-one year-old Dan Kingman had packed his bags and was on his way to West Point, when Civil War General Philip Sheridan informed the young lieutenant that he had a rather different destination in mind for him: the wilds of Yellowstone National Park.

It would fall to Kingman, a talented officer in the Army Corps of Engineers, to construct and maintain roads and bridges in Yellowstone. The "figure-8," double-track wagon road that he designed and built to provide access to Yellowstone's extraordinary attractions became known as the Grand Loop. [See Map]

To this day, it remains the primary corridor of travel within the park. The descriptions that follow are designed to take you along this "figure 8" loop system, from one major intersection to the next. If you decide to go in the opposite direction from the description, simply start at the end of the section and work backward. (In which case, of course, when you find something described "on the left," you'll need to look right.)