Trails of Yellowstone National Park

Yellowstone National Park has over 1,100 miles (1,800 km)[1] of blazed and mapped hiking trails, including some that have been in use for hundreds of years.

In the Middle Prehistoric era, humans appear to have continued living in mountain areas through droughts severe enough for plains populations to disappear.

Foragers wintered in protected valleys along the edges of the plateau, and summered in higher hunting grounds that might have extended fifty to a hundred miles away.

[4] John Colter (or Coulter), a former member of the Lewis and Clark Expedition, spent the winter of 1806-1807 trapping along the middle Yellowstone River.

[6] Colter's route included Indian trails both inside and outside the current park, such as over Pryor Gap near Cody, Wyoming; around the west shore of Yellowstone Lake and down Yellowstone River to the crossing near Tower Fall (a geothermal area on the east bank is "Hot Spring Brimstone" on Clark's map); and continuing up Lamar River and Soda Butte Creek and Clarks Fork to return to the Pryor Gap trail.

The Shoshone and Bannock tribes had established a plains-style culture based on the buffalo on the Snake River plains, but the regional extirpation forced them to organize hunting migrations across the Yellowstone Plateau.

An article by Charles W. Cook and David E. Folsom describing the expedition was published in a Chicago magazine in 1870, raising popular attention.

[12] These trails are primarily associated with park attractions, especially geothermal features, and are sometimes out and back day hikes, and in many cases are improved boardwalks and supported with interpretive signs and exhibits.