The Marshall-Firehole Hotel was a crude hotel built in 1884 in Yellowstone National Park and operated until 1891. The hotel complex was essentially a small frontier town, the precursor of modern tourist communities in and around Yellowstone today. The Marshall-Firehole Hotel archeological site is arguably one of the more important cultural resources relating to the National Park system's developmental history.

Its was the first facility of its kind built within a National Park strictly to serve tourists. Thus, the site directly addresses one of the National Park Service's fundamental purposes - to provide for the enjoyment of park resources and values by people of the United States.

Volunteer students and teachers from the Lincoln Public School's Science Focus Program ("Zoo School") surveying the underwater component of the Marshall/Firehole Hotel site in the Firehole River, Yellowstone National Park (Photo by David A. Hunt).

Although the land-based portion of the site is not in excessive danger, a riverine trash dump is rapidly being destroyed by bottle and other artifact collectors. The Marshall-Firehole Hotel Underwater Archeology Project was undertaken in response to this vandalism. Project objectives are to identify the range of archeological resources at the site and their physical locations; identify site elements impacted by past and current park, public, and natural actions; recommend protection and interpretation alternatives; and provide an educational opportunity for a group of high school students and their teachers.

The project is a cooperative venture between the National Park Service(NPS) and the PAST Foundation and partially funded through a NPS-Intermountain Region Challenge Cost Share grant. Participants include archeologists and volunteers from Yellowstone National Park, NPS-Midwest Archeological Center, PAST Foundation, Eastern Carolina University, and students and teachers from the Lincoln Public Schools Science Program School (Zoo School) in Nebraska. NEXT >>