HISTORICAL DOCUMENTATION OF YELLOWSTONE LAKE SHORE, YELLOWSTONE NATIONAL PARK, WYOMING

A critical unanswered question related to shoreline protection studies is: “What was the shore morphology prior to the installation of shore armor?” This question pervades virtually all coastal studies and is rarely answerable due to lack of data regarding shore morphologies prior to installation of shore protection structures.

Yellowstone National Park (YNP) provides an opportunity to evaluate this question quantitatively and qualitatively because the National Park Service (NPS) requires detailed reports, surveys, construction plans, and photographs for all infrastructure improvements in an effort to assess impacts on park environments and visitor experiences. Historical documents and associated maps of parts of the Yellowstone Lake shore spanning 126 years were located at the YNP Heritage and Research Center and the NPS Technical Information Center and were fused with recent topographic data within a GIS for analysis.

The purpose of this work was to:1) present a case study using methods grounded in Historical GIS and Cartographic Interpretation in conjunction with Historical Rephotography, 2) enhance our understanding of the historical development of the Yellowstone Lake shore with emphasis placed on installation of coastal protection structures, 3) establish a visual chronology for the development of several selected road segments near the shore of Yellowstone Lake, and 4) demonstrate, through the use of historical evidence, that shore modification has been an ongoing process since the formative years of Yellowstone National Park.

Qualitative descriptions of selected shore segments of Yellowstone Lake were possible with the use of historical maps and photographs. Historical maps of Yellowstone Lake document the location of a primary road and offer a guide to the development of the Yellowstone Lake shore while the historical photographs provide a glimpse of beach morphologies at the time of shore armor installation. Furthermore, examination of this historical evidence merged with in-situ data in a GIS suggests that the slope for protected beaches has steepened over time while unprotected beaches show little change. The ability to georeference historical evidence with profile data offers a unique view of the evolution of the beaches of Yellowstone Lake prior to and after the installation of shore armor.